Abandon
by Carmen Echo
Summary: Compiled TKxSL fics, tweaked & continued as a full fic. :The bathroom scene was my first slip. As it turns out  the first of many. I let it get too far, my choice of words, perhaps too encouraging. I never expected him to actually follow through with it.:
1. Tomorrow

**Abandon**

_a·ban·don _

_1. vt: leave somebody behind_

_2. vt: leave a place because of danger_

_3. vt: halt something in progress_

_4. vt: give in to emotion_

_n: lack of restraint: complete lack of inhibition or self-restraint_

A/N: Allrighty. So this is the compilation of what at first seemed a series of ficlets that flowed too well together not to become an actual story. In other words a whole lot of steamy man lovin'. If that's a problem, I can only say that the solution is ridiculously simple.

Let us pretend Syaoran is sixteen and Touya is twenty one and still living with his family 'cause he goes to college. It would just be later than in the series.

Warnings: Lime. Minor X adult.

Disclaimer: I own none of it. Seriously. And if you think I do - you're sorely mistaken. I'm actually quite poor.

**Tomorrow**

I see Sakura often. We like to call it 'having fun together', but really it's usually nothing more than a movie, conversation, and if she feels up to it, a kiss goodnight. It's really not that bad. Sometimes, or rather, more often than not, we end up at her house. Have dinner with her family. That's not too bad either. It usually lasts fifteen minutes to half an hour, I never eat anything, just have tea, and her dad always politely offers twice. The first time to see if I'm going to have anything, and the second time to make sure. Sakura wolfs down a veggie roll and some rice at a speed that isn't altogether feminine, and I don't watch her. I have this little thing where the smallest details can turn me off. Seeing girls eat, especially at that ungodly speed, turns me off. The knowledge alone, that she is currently eating something in close proximity of me makes me cringe. Though there is one person I like to watch. And that person is her brother.

I don't do it. I honestly attempt not to do it, but it's unfortunately outside my immediate ability to not watch Touya eat. I'd gladly watch him do anything else, but I rarely get to. It's mostly eating or watching TV. Both are with someone else in the room. This is bad. And 'bad' in this case, happens to be a horrible understatement, because this is my girlfriend's brother who I'm finding so attractive, but isn't as though I can help it. He is someone you notice because of the way he moves, not because of the way he looks. He is the kind of person who's presence you feel, even if you can't see him, the person you know is there because you unconsciously memorize the way his footsteps sound. Within them, you begin finding a rhythm. He is tall, thinly built, and pleasantly languorous in everything he does. It doesn't have to imply sex, though it mostly does. Just because the way he operates his chopsticks makes me think things I should be thinking about my girlfriend, but at the moment, am not, because he happens to be a great deal more appealing. He chews slowly, thoroughly, in small, delicate bites. His jaw moves gently over his food, the motion ascending up to his temples. Touya swallows just as slowly, Adam's apple bobbing as he does so. This is usually when I need to swallow the saliva that collected at the bottom of my mouth, because having been so preoccupied with watching him I forget to do it myself.

Today is a 'good day' because everyone decides to move over to the living room to watch some television. After about ten minutes Sakura's father filters out of the room unnoticed because he has that tendency, and I'm left with Sakura sitting beside me, and Touya in the armchair closer to the other side of the room. He has the remote. This means we watch sports. For once Sakura doesn't exercise her ability to yap and decides to just give up the fight for the remote control before it starts.

No one speaks. Sakura makes no move to be affectionate towards me, we only do this in private, and even in private it doesn't go much past the occasional kiss. My hands are folded in my lap. Again, my eyes are on him, and I automatically feel guilty. But the desire to strip my girlfriend's older brother with my eyes wins over my guilty conscience at an alarming rate, so I continue. His eyes are surprisingly large. Large and slanted. And dark. I reluctantly stop watching him to slip a glance at Sakura, who's head is turned towards the TV, for once immersed in what she is watching. I turn my eyes back to him and feel my stomach drop. He is looking back. Though looking isn't quite the word to describe the way his eyes are boring into me. And I want to slip my eyes away but a second has already gone by so there's no way of making it look casual. Looking away now would mean admitting defeat. So I don't. And I do something I promised myself to never do. I blush. My cheeks fill with color and it's almost worse than having to look back. The blush is the deep kind. The kind that you know is creeping up your neck. The kind someone across the room can see.

It's humiliating. He keeps looking. My lips are dry, and impulsively, my teeth clamp down on the bottom one. This seems to amuse him, because the right corner of his lips twitches upwards, bearing some kind of resemblance to a smile. This sets off the dimple in his cheek. And I'm pretty sure that right about now I'm about to snap.

"I need to use the bathroom." I whisper to Sakura, and she nods absently, still thankfully consumed with what ever is on TV.

The water is cold. Very cold. The kind of cold that makes your jaws clench, that numbs your face, and perhaps anything else that needs numbing. I turn the tap off and sink my face into one of the pristine towels from the rack. It smells like flowery detergent. Patting down my sopping forehead and cheeks I look back to the mirror. The usual pallor returns to my skin. I start thinking about going home before I do something stupid like actually try to make a pass at him. It's not like I'll have a healthy excuse if he rejects me either. Maybe the smirk was just a hallucination. Maybe he was looking somewhere behind me. Maybe- he's standing in the doorway because I'm too stupid to close the door behind myself when I walk into bathrooms.

One step, and he is in the room, invading my personal space, and worse, closing the door behind him. I can't say anything. Not in the metaphorical sense either. I'm actually shocked and frozen and looking like a complete moron with a stunned expression on my face. He takes another step. And because their bathroom is so damn small he is inches from me. He raises his hand, leans in, and forcefully cups the side of my neck. I can then appreciate the true magnitude of his hands. The tips of his fingers weave into the hair at the nape of my neck while the edge of his palm is on the corner of my jaw. I involuntarily move my head to accommodate this pleasant pressure because I realize that I actually like being handled this way by him. He is taller than me. By about a head. And this is terrible because it makes me feel like a little girl compared to him. Though at that point I couldn't care less because his other hand is coming around my hip, then down, grabbing my leg and literally yanking it up as he maneuvers his hips to press into mine. His hand moves to do the same to my other leg, lifting me off the ground and I'm feeling impulsive because my right hand comes around his neck and I'm afraid to lose balance and fall but the fear seems to distant. It seems unreal and far away, back with all the things that make sense like being in Sakura's bathroom and washing my face, not being pressed up against a wall with her brother's hard, unyielding body and loving every millisecond of what's happening.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I realize that I can't fall because both his hands are under my ass, pushing me upwards so that the aching hardness in my jeans is pressed into something similar in his. I can't physically register what I'm doing, because I'm pressing back, and I'm doing it willingly, and he is older, and he is my girlfriend's brother, and she thinks I'm straight, and I swear I could never feel something like this with her. It all feels unbearably good, and then his hand returns to the side of my neck, harsher this time, and I bend as much as I can, offering myself without any sort of pride or, God forbid, inhibition. His other hand slides up my ass and onto the small of my back under my shirt. My hips twitch outward, against his, and then he begins to move. He does this as slowly as he eats, with steady, slightly increasing pressure, hips grinding against mine, and everything is so hot, and retarded and wrong that my clouded mind can't even fathom what's happening.

"Oh shit." I almost moan. But my voice is too strained to moan, so I kind of breathe it. I'm pressed to him. Completely. My whole front is glued to him. He groans against my neck and the air that skates over my heated, perspiring flesh is enough to send chills down my spine. I arch into him, more so than before, and somewhere along the line he forgets to be slow, slamming me into the wall with his body.

He isn't kissing me. And for some reason I need that one intimacy almost more than I need physical contact with his hips. He reads my mind, because within a second his lips are so close, hovering millimeters away from mine and I can feel his erratic breathing and I swear if he doesn't do something I might just explode.

His are barely parted, as are mine. Our lips are touching, but nothing is really happening besides the constant friction of our bodies that's making me elicit sounds that I didn't know existed. We're just breathing against each other. Everything is too much. Too close, too hot, too sudden. He pulls his mouth away a little, and brings it back, and my lips follow his hungrily, though not daring to take it any further than what he so far allowed.

"Don't stare… If you're not going to do anything about it…" he whispers against my lips and pulls away completely, dropping me on the tile floor in a standing position.

I struggle to keep upright, and lean against the counter to be able to do so, because none of my joints seem to be working properly. The only way you can tell that Touya was just pressed against me is the faint discoloring in his cheeks. Otherwise he's as perfect as ever. Me on the other hand, I look like people are supposed to after this kind of thing.

It feels like hours have gone by but it's only been about ninety seconds. I must look really pathetic, because he just smirks, shakes his head, and walks out of the bathroom, lazily throwing one last phrase over his shoulder.

"Come back when you're ready to make the first move." and the slight rasp in his voice makes me shiver.

Everything seems to hurt from unreleased tension and I'm desperate for more contact. I go through the whole face washing routine again, and go downstairs. I don't even remember what I say to Sakura about having to leave, but she protest too vehemently. I don't see him again throughout my remaining five minutes in the Kinomoto residence.

Only when I get home do I realize that I'll be back there tomorrow. And it won't be to 'have fun' with Sakura. There is another person I need to see, for a completely different matter.

A/N: R&R.


	2. Not

**Abandon**

_a·ban·don _

_1. vt: leave somebody behind_

_2. vt: leave a place because of danger_

_3. vt: halt something in progress_

_4. vt: give in to emotion_

_n: lack of restraint: complete lack of inhibition or self-restraint_

Warnings: Lime. Minor x adult.

Disclaimer: You know the drill. I own none of it. And if I did my plots would own a LOT more than the original ones do.

**Not**

We are all in the park. For some reason, this time, after dinner, Sakura's father decided to take all of us to the park. To eat ice-cream and act like we are enjoying ourselves. And I guess we do. Depending on what degree of amusement one can give watching Sakura's brother lick his vanilla cone with agonizing slowness and getting painfully hard at the sight thereof. I of course politely decline the offer of ice-cream. Twice. Because Sakura's father is too well-mannered to leave it without the gentle 'Are you sure?'.

And so the walk ensues. Sakura and her father, blissfully unaware of my growing discomfort, advance, deeply immersed in conversation. I scowl irritably under my breath. Two days in a row I'm alone with her brother. Good luck. Or bad luck depending on how I look at it.

The quiet, but relatively clear slurp jerks me out of my trance. My eyes grow wide, and the obviously dirty sound only adds to how hard I'm getting, pooling in an almost unwelcome heat at the base of my stomach. I turn my head to him. And he ignores me. Continues lapping at the melting ice-cream that had already gotten a chance to drip past the edge of his cone.

My paces slow. I don't know what I'm doing. I thought about what he said the day before about making the first move. And I suppose this is it. I'm at an utter loss as to what to do next because his paces slow a little as well. Sakura and her father are a good few feet away and the distance grows as me and Touya both stop. I'm standing slightly further back than he is, eyeing him, and the ice-cream cone that falls from his hand. His head turns slightly, as if to try and look at me and once again I'm doing something that I didn't intend to do. I reach for his sleeve. My fingers tug it. Softly. Almost gingerly. For what feels like only a second.

He turns around. And his eyes are right there. He's staring at me, making me feel about two inches tall. He eats me with his eyes and I submit myself without even realizing I'm doing it. My hands weakly pull the edges of his shirt and I'm mortified. It feels like I have to beg for this. And he is looking at me as if I'm begging. I bite my lip and I know I look miserable. In any case miserable enough for him to push his fingers through the hair at the back of my neck sending chills down my spine, and then pull it to manipulate my head upwards, hurting me enough for me to eagerly lean into the contact. Again. The same situation repeats itself. He takes and I give like I'm starved to feel his hands on me. Once his other hand pushes my hips into his I realize that I am. Desperate.

Touya is bent over me, lips hovering over mine and I moan for not being able to reach him. As this sound escapes my mouth he's kissing me. He is eating my mouth. Slowly. Harshly. And I shudder at the sheer feeling of his tongue past my lips. It's so intrusive it makes me weak in the knees. My body is completely drained and all I can do is wrap my arms around him to avoid slumping against him completely. Which I fail at. And once again he picks me up off the ground, my legs come around him and he pushes me up against the nearest tree.

It's dark. I can barely see. But I remember exactly what everything feels like. In the bathroom only a day ago, it was slow and agonizing. Now it's much faster. And I'm less acutely aware of his body. I just know there's friction. Sweet, hard, delicious friction that makes me forget that the tree's trunk is pushing into my back and hurting me. I concentrate on the feeling that I had to beg for. The heat. The sharp nails scraping down my ribs. Under my shirt. Eliciting sounds that suspiciously resemble whines. I don't know what I want. I want to stop because it feels too good to possibly be legal. And I ache to continue for the same reason.

There are two kinds of extremes. Good extremes. And bad extremes. All extremes are easily classified. Except this one. Because it's so intense I don't know what to call it. And I'm scared half to death. Scared that we'll get caught. Scared that I'll come right then and there. Scared that I can't stop. Scared that he will…

The situation is perfect. Perfect in a retarded, abstract kind of way. Everything is just bad enough. We're in a park, dangerously close to getting caught, he controls everything. I feel myself slide down the trunk of the tree a little, my shirt hiking up. The bark proceeds to put sizeable dents in the skin of my back, while I bite my lip and hiss. Touya notices. And time slows down as I feel him reach over and pull the shirt over my exposed back. The closest he's come to caring.

In a moment it's back it its original speed, and by some wild impulse I grab his face and press my lips against his. He takes the invitation and we're back to eating each other's mouths. The pressure is building. He's slightly less controlled now. His movements slip and he's more messy. Just then Sakura's distant voice yanks me out of my trans.

From there everything happens alarmingly fast. We're back on the trail we were walking on, as she walks up to us, looking a bit worried. I automatically fake a slight limp.

'Hey where did you guys go?' she asks, and I fervently thank God that she can't see my face enough to be able to tell what I'd just been doing.

'Oh, I accidentally twisted my ankle and Touya was helping me up… I'm fine now. Nothing is sprained.' I lie. Badly. Like… Voice-cracks-have-to-clear-throat badly. She buys it because she has no choice. There is nothing else that we could possibly be doing alone for those two or three minutes.

'If you're having trouble walking you can lean on me.' she smiles.

'Thanks. I don't need help.' I continue limping as her father joins us. Touya looks only vaguely surprised at how quickly I found a way out of the situation. We keep walking.

The evening ends with a drive home, because I accept Mr Kinomoto's kind offer. As I 'limp' out the door I feel someone's eyes on my back. I throw a glance over my shoulder. Not at Sakura.

A/N: R&R. It keeps me writing folks.


	3. Seconds

**Abandon**

_a·ban·don _

_1. vt: leave somebody behind_

_2. vt: leave a place because of danger_

_3. vt: halt something in progress_

_4. vt: give in to emotion_

_n: lack of restraint: complete lack of inhibition or self-restraint_

Warnings: Lime-esque. It's a little past lime, but no real graphic language. I've managed to skirt around that.

Disclaimer: I own none of it. I just write it the way I think it should be - and people wholly agree with my ideas.

**Seconds**

I run home. As fast as I physically can. Complete with embarrassing facial expression and heavy breath. People turn to look at me and I just rush past them because it feel like their eyes are accusing. That they all somehow know what I had just been doing just minutes ago. This is insane. My skin burns where he touched me. I avoid the memory of his hands. His lips. How fervently I gave myself up in the maybe three minutes that he pressed me up against a tree and took me. Owned me.

Everything is suddenly upside down. Completely fucked up because of him. Because one morning, my girlfriend's brother woke up, and decided that today was the day he would make me his bitch. The realization that I successfully evaded bites me in the metaphorical ass with surprising enthusiasm. I cheated on my girlfriend. The girl that I for once felt something for. Something that might not have been particularly deep, but at least was real. I don't know what Touya is. I don't know what I feel. It's too goddamn retarded. Too short. Too dirty. I can't tell. And I don't want to. All I want is to go back in time to never have looked at him at the dinner table. And then to lock the door to the bathroom. And then not tug on his sleeve like a pathetic whore. Asking him. Begging him to please oh please press me up against the trunk of a bloody tree and turn me into a blithering idiot for the duration of the encounter.

I get home, so straight to my room, fall on my bed, and think.

I barely sleep most of the night. There are sporadic, disjointed dreams that I don't bother trying to remember the next morning. Mostly things regarding Sakura's brother. I try not to think about him. Or her. Or what I did. Twice. And how much my body needs to do it again. I'm under the impression that release would clear my head. But the only person that could give it to me sufficiently is Touya. And I'm scared of him. Perhaps 'of him' is a little harsh, but more of the effect he has on me. Because even though I already promised myself I wouldn't do anything more with him I don't know if that's a promise I can live up to.

My thoughts halt as the insistent ring of the phone destroys the fragile silence that's managed to establish itself in my room. It's of course Sakura.

"Yeah." my tired voice.

"Hi. I was worried about you."

"Why? There isn't anything to worry about."

"Well, you hurt your ankle yesterday. And I was wondering if you felt up to hanging out today. But you know if it still hurts I can just stop by your-"

"No. That won't be necessary. I'll come over." I reply too quickly. Without thinking. At all.

"Are you sure? I mean of you're still in pain it's o-"

"I'm sure. I'll see you in half an hour." And I hang up with a seemingly resounding click. I then throw the receiver onto my bed and bury my face in my hands. I know full well that it isn't my girlfriend I'm going to see.

Standing on her porch, I'm simultaneously thinking a million different things. I didn't know whether I really want to see Sakura's face at all. Whether I can even handle being in the same house as her brother. Everything is pressing, waiting for answers, and I can't give them. Because answers are what I desperately lack. The fact that I'm standing on her porch is a result of carnal instincts. Ones I've learned - the hard way - not to trust. The image of his face flashes in my mind and the unpleasant sinking sensation settles itself in the pit of my stomach.

I ring the doorbell before I get a chance to change my mind. The door flies open almost instantly. It's him. His slanted eyes seem unusually wide. He was expecting me.

"Uh. Hi." I say.

"Hey." he breathes. From upstairs Sakura's voice yells something about coming down in another five minutes. All I hear is the 'five minutes'.

"Take your time!" I yell back past Touya's shoulder. Again without thinking. I'm getting a little too reckless.

His head flicks towards the stairs and then back to me. As if to check if anyone is coming. He grabs me by the arm and drags me into the house, closing the door.

"Dad is out." he whispers. Too quickly. Pulling me into the kitchen, where she can't see us from the staircase. I can't see straight. Everything is happening much faster than I can realize it, and he's already sitting down and pulling me into his lap, back facing him. The chairs are barely large enough for me to fit between his legs, and I'm turning towards him to fist my hand into his hair and kiss him. It doesn't get any more animalistic than this. We're both hard in seconds, and his hands are feverishly undoing my pants as I squirm against him. He groans into my mouth. Quietly. I almost can't hear it. We're a mess of limbs and clothes and need.

His hand slips into my boxers and I'm close to losing it. His strokes are harsh and fast, because at this point I don't need much. The preliminary work was stretched out over the past two days. My teeth clamp down on his bottom lip and I'm shaking because the amount of feeling is nearly unbearable. His other arm closes around my waist, firmly holding the bottom of my body against him.

In theory, the position we're in is uncomfortable. Hell, both in theory and in practice. Especially in practice. The top of my body is twisted around in order for my face to reach his, while my hand grips the arm-rest of the chair for support. And really, it isn't particularly comfortable. But I can't feel discomfort. It doesn't register. All I feel is him, and the brilliant pace of the strokes. And I'm arching into his hand and whimpering like the whore that I am. Our lips part and for a few moments we're just breathing against each other. Short, ragged breaths because moans aren't something either of us can afford. I twist back around, not to face him anymore. His hand squeezes and I gasp. Loudly. My head falls back against his shoulder and he sinks his teeth into my neck.

"Fuck." I exhale that one word, as my eyes snap open. Right about now I'm grabbing fistfuls of his track pants, biting my lip and fucking his hand at a relentlessly fast rhythm. His hands are strong. Sakura's brother just holds me tighter. As if I'm going anywhere. I can't believe the sounds escaping my mouth. This is impossible to fake. Not properly anyway. Not the way I'm doing it. With the prize-winning look of complete and total physical abandon I spasm and release all over his hand and the inside of my boxers.

A few post-orgasmic twitches and reality is slowly and ruthlessly floating back into my mind. That's when I notice that he's still clutching me. Breathing against my neck. And the unattended hardness in his pants doesn't fade.

I'm about to reach back into the welcoming heat of his arousal as I hear Sakura running down the stairs. I've never been more thankful that she sounds like a rushing elephant in my life. Instantly, I'm off his lap and were both on our feet. I fix myself in record time, just as she walks in. I just know that in the one moment, everything I did is written in my face. But my girlfriend doesn't see it.

From then, it all becomes distant. The sounds - muted. Almost as if I'm watching the whole scenario from a detached perspective. Somewhere behind me Touya opens the door to the fridge, takes something out and slams it shut as Sakura asks me something. I reply. He pushes past me as if nothing happened. That kind of shit is easy for him. He bumps into his sister on purpose, almost knocking her off balance. She's only angry about it for a second. I'm amazed at how completely calm he looks.

As he walks out of the kitchen, and I watch him past Sakura's shoulder, he turns his head to the side and quite visibly licks his fingers. Considering what he's just done with that hand, I almost choke my words. I pause. And continue saying something or other. But I don't hear myself or my girlfriend anymore. I don't hear anything. Except the sound of his breath against my neck, just seconds ago.

A/N: Review. Because he comes in this one.


	4. Wrong

**Abandon**

_a·ban·don _

_1. vt: leave somebody behind_

_2. vt: leave a place because of danger_

_3. vt: halt something in progress_

_4. vt: give in to emotion_

_n: lack of restraint: complete lack of inhibition or self-restraint_

Warnings: Strong lime. Minor x adult.

Disclaimer: I own none of it. And even if I pretended to claim it as my own how far do you seriously think I could get without someone calling me out on it?

**Wrong**

"Hello?" female voice. I hang up. Minutes are the longest thing ever. Ten pass. The longest ten minutes I've ever fucking spent. I dial again.

"Hello?" male voice. His voice.

"Touya?" I sound vaguely strangled and hoarse.

"I'll give her the-" he begins quickly, obviously running from me.

"NoIcalledtotalktoyou." I blurt out in less than a second. Now he can't go anywhere. I'm sweating - nervous. I don't know what it is that's pushing me to do this. That's keeping me from hanging up.

"What do you want?" his voice drops to almost a whisper. He doesn't sound as calm as he was earlier.

"To see you. I need to see you." my voice shakes and it feels as if there isn't enough breath in my lungs. I don't think he can tell. I pray he can't, actually. I mentally go over what I just said and congratulate myself on the choice of words. Need. I think I sank to a new low.

"Fuck. I can't right now." he sounds genuinely upset by this. More than I'd expected. My stomach gives a sickening lurch at the idea of him caring.

"Please." I'm ready to shoot myself. I'm saying things I think because I can't stop, not because I'm comfortable with saying them. "Just for a little while." I'm pathetic. All the while I'm in the corner of my room, on the floor. He's hesitating. Thinking.

"Meet me at the park entrance. Get out right now. Can you?" he speaks quietly, almost frantically, and I slowly start believing that he wants this.

"Yeah." we hang up without another word.

I'm positive that I'm single-handedly ruining this. I'm taking my relationship with Sakura by it's fragile little legs and smashing it into a wall repeatedly. It's nauseating. It's hurting me. _I'm _hurting me. I'm trying not to think all together while I slip into shoes.

I'm waiting. It's cold. It tends to be colder at night but this is ridiculous. It shouldn't be but it is. I didn't think to bring a sweater. I'm in a fucking t-shirt, freezing my ass off because it's the end of the summer and he isn't here yet.

Someone's grabs me. Someone's warm, welcoming body presses up against me from behind and I can't see who it is. But I know it's him. His arms come around me in a hug as he buries his head in the crook of my neck. I suddenly feel ten pounds lighter. Like all the tension released and now there's only the sensation of my sinking stomach. Because he's panting against my neck and holding me too tight. Relief is a wonderful feeling. In this case it just drains, and as if to let it all out I heave a deep, shuddering sigh.

"Fucking God." he whispers, still panting. "They wouldn't fuck off with the questions. I ran all the way here."

"Why are we doing this?" my dejection at this whole thing seeps through every syllable of that sentence.

"I don't know. Why the hell are you in a t-shirt?" he inquires, not as seriously as he should.

"I don't know. I didn't think to put anything on." I turn my head and his lips are already there. Waiting for mine on pure instinct. We kiss. Hard and starved. I swear I can feel my attention span shrink. Somewhere far away, in the realm of consciousness I'm wondering why I'm doing this to myself. Why I'm openly instigating this. This is bad. This is cheating. And there isn't a valid excuse for it. I'm not drunk. He's not forcing me. He's just being wildly hard to resist. I pull away.

"You're such a fucking whore." He breathes into my ear while his hand toys the button on my jeans. Then undoes it.

"You don't have to do this if you don't want to…" I reply, entirely too breathlessly to be convincing. We're still standing at the park entrance.

"So you're saying that I can walk off right now and you won't stop me?" there is a playful tone behind his words. But it isn't happy-playful. It's I'm-clearly-fucking-with-you-playful. It's not even playful. It's _playing_. He nips at my ear and I moan. Like the whore that he insists I am.

"Can you really let yourself walk off?" I say with more confidence than I'll ever have. I don't know what pushes these words out of my mouth. All I know is that I want him to touch me. And at the moment it makes a lot of sense, because as of late, a lot of my actions are driven by an immediate want. A demand.

"And what if I can?" his hands slip away from me and once again my back is bathed in cold. He's still playing, but we aren't opponents in a game with equal opportunity. Touya backs away. I turn around slowly, with what I suspect to be a pitiful look on my face. I just look at him.

"Then go." my voice sounds more defeated than it should, as I hook my thumb into the edge of my jeans under my t-shirt - hiking it up. I'm staring at him with big, sad brown eyes and he shuts off. His face goes blank, he turns away and begins walking in the opposite direction. I panic instantly. It turns into a shiver that spreads throughout my body and I'm standing there shaking, and boring my eyes into his back and hugging myself.

"Touya…" I exhale. But he hears me. And I know because he stops in his tracks. I walk up to him and hesitantly lay a hand on his back. He turns around.

"What do you want?" I can feel the tension seep out of his words. He's not unfazed. Not as unfazed as he usually appears. So maybe not a game. A fleeting glimmer of hope stirs somewhere inside me. He cares.

"Nothing. Go." I mutter. I don't want him to hear what my guilty conscience wants me to say. I look away because he's too condescending. His eyes know. They see right through me, as if I was ever hard to read. I just don't want to face their knowing. So I run. I hide my eyes. And then re-evaluate the kind of person I've become because of Sakura's brother. A fucking coward.

I close my eyes for a second. Composure doesn't come. Touya keeps looking at me. Grabs my face and turns it up. Forcing me to look. Hurting me. I'm giving up. I don't know why he's doing thingsthis to me. But he takes my hand and practically pulls me into the park. Nearest bench. Hands under my shirt. And I'm done. I'm gone. Everything sane is too far for me to bother thinking about because he begins touching me. Kissing me everywhere. No one ever kissed me like that. Not the way he does. Not every square inch of visible skin. I moan. My hand fists into his hair. It's coarse. I close my eyes in hopes of avoiding imminent realization of what's happening. Though more putting it off than avoiding.

My mouth makes moans that I don't register ever consenting to. It's one in the morning. A dark, cold outside place. Him. His lips and hands. Feverishly, expertly undoing my pants. Pulling on my boxers just enough to make contact. And then the relentless strokes. Slow and hard and so good. He's breathing against my skin. It feels like heaven. A heaven I never imagined to look like this, on a park bench with my girlfriend's older brother. Fuck angels, clouds and happiness, or what ever the hell the popular stereotype is. This is it. This is what I wanted. It's what I've been subconsciously missing. Something wrong. So incredibly wrong. An intrinsically bad thing to do. Something society wouldn't pat me on the back for. An action that isn't driven by morals or principles. Things I start horribly lacking every time he touches me.

The concept of morality seems so distant. I don't know it anymore. I'm no longer someone that has a normal set of values. What's 'good' isn't quite as satisfying as it used to be. I no longer rely on logic to act. I rely on what ever seems right at the time. And really none of it is right, so all that really directs me is Touya. All this is, is a series of whims, based on what ever seeing him makes me want to do.

Currently, seeing him makes me want physical contact.

I feel oddly light-headed for the amount of guilt I'm experiencing per every unit of time. Everything is so surreal. This seems like such a theoretically terrible idea. A fucking park. How cliché. But it's getting me off, because I'm letting him bite and suck my neck until I feel like he'll draw blood. But pain feels so good with him. I'm only vaguely aware that this will leave a mark. Quite frankly, at this point, I'm beyond caring. Guilt no longer chokes, but becomes an undertone to everything else I feel. And that isn't because the guilt became any less potent. It's because the feeling of his hands on me greatly surpasses my guilt in being able to control me. His lips pull away from my neck and he looks at me. Just looks. And continues the strokes. And I look back because his eyes are mesmerizing. Then I kiss him. In that consuming way that makes him shudder and bite my lip and deepen the kiss. When It comes down to it, he isn't so controlled. Not quite as cool, calm and collected as he wants to look. He is only human. Deliciously so. With long, thin, talented hands that make my back arch and my head fall back.

It's alarming how the multiple tracks of my mind instantly channel into one. Him. And nothing else. Because nothing else seems significant enough. Not right now.

I forget to be surprised at how different I've become. A few days - and I'm not a coldly logical adult that I thought I was supposed to be. I'm a self-destructively impulsive mess of hormones and stupid things that I promised myself I'd never do. I skipped being an idiot teenager. And that's what he reduced me to. A pining, pathetic little boy with a raging hard-on.

Pressure builds, his pace quickens, and I'm finished. I'm coming and seeing white and moaning his name. He gently kisses the side of my neck, and I slump against him. Because I can. Because there's no one to tell me not to. That is followed by a few blissfully blank seconds of just breathing.

And I do what I didn't get a chance to do before. I'm sliding down is body, pulling his pants down along with his boxers and he doesn't get a chance to realize what's happening or try to stop me, but he's already in my mouth.

"Oh-_God_" he is half surprised, half beginning to slowly fuck my lips because he knows he can't hide that he needs this. So much for cool and calm. I revel in the way he feels and tastes, methodically tightening and releasing my lips as I swallow, the flex of my throat pushing against his throbbing length and making him clutch the edge of the bench for dear life. I see his weakness. I watch the way he tries to fight physical need and fails, and moans and bites his lip and pulls my hair. I drink it in. I don't tease. I'm not that cruel. I haven't done this much. There had only been two other men in my life. Both my age, both before Sakura, and kept under strictest secrecy. They were merely boys. Experiments with my transient, adolescent sexuality. But he wasn't an experiment. There wasn't anything experimental about what we did. It was raw, needy and impatient. A feeling that became jarringly familiar.

It's over as quickly as it begun. Suddenly, Touya leans over and sharply pushes me back. I'm flung backwards by the staggering blow, completely stunned, before realizing that he's already running in the opposite direction.

"Touya!" my voice breaks. I'm lost. It's a terrible feeling. I don't know what I did wrong. He doesn't turn back.

A/N: R&R. This one was really porny.


	5. Panic

**Abandon**

_a·ban·don _

_1. vt: leave somebody behind_

_2. vt: leave a place because of danger_

_3. vt: halt something in progress_

_4. vt: give in to emotion_

_n: lack of restraint: complete lack of inhibition or self-restraint_

A/N: Touya's point of view on this whole situation. Finally.

Warnings: References to the lime in past chapters. Minor x adult.

Disclaimer: I own none of it. It would be NC-17 if I did.

**Panic**

Sleep isn't coming. I want to sleep. Badly. But it's eluding me. I can't stand myself. I can't stand my idiot sister. And her equally primitive boyfriend, who is, by the way, much easier to manipulate than I could have ever imagined. Why. Why would he just let me. The idiot. The imbecile. I'm furious. With him. With myself and my dangerous habits. Or rather impulses. Because I don't make it a habit going after little boys. Not until now anyway. But sweet Jesus - it was too easy.

I observe. Anyone I meet, really. I analyze and assess until I finally come to some sort of solid conclusion about that person. So I met Li. At first I would see him at school with Sakura. He was younger then. Substantially more subdued. He successfully faded into the crowd. Quiet. Non-descript. Meticulously dressed. He never looked like he had potential. Back then he was easier to read. A lot of youth and a lot of bottled anger, with little eloquence. I was younger myself back then, so I never paid him enough thought to notice anything beyond the surface.

Months passed. A year. Two. Three. I started noticing his existence. Him and Sakura hanging out alone together. Going for 'walks' in the park. He had stopped being so non-descript around that time. Sharp cheekbones. Equally sharp eyes. A jarring, almost uncomfortable presence that left a vaguely unpleasant aftertaste. He became the glaring stain in the uniformed crowd. Loosened tie, shirt not entirely buttoned up, messy hair in his eyes. A gentle, dramatic voice. Nothing about him so much as hinted at naiveté anymore. He was no longer just the angry kid. There was something about him, something refreshing, a change in not only looks but demeanor. Perhaps the way he spoke, with an oddly nonchalant intensity that forced people to take him seriously.

But I observe. And what I deduced didn't exactly coincide with Sakura's prepubescent dream of a perfect boyfriend. And it didn't have to, because at school, Li had always been marvelously straight. He was great. Interesting, smart, attractive. Gave her space, time, comfort. Called at the right times, and spoke for just long enough to entice. All that bullshit that females love. I wondered about him too much, so I read Sakura's diary. A habit that remains one of my favorites, low as it may be. Hence all this information.

So I observe further. Li didn't push. Sexually, he had the persistence of an eighty-year-old man. Which didn't quite click with my idea of the regular teenage boy. Sakura wrote pages about the feelings, and then mentioned something about a few kisses on the lips. If anything bigger had occurred I'd have seen it, shuddered and skipped the next few pages. So, supposedly, at the peak of his sexual prime, Syaoran still hadn't tried anything. When I was that age, having a girlfriend that I didn't get consistent ass from was a waste of time. Feelings or no. And something told me Sakura's personality wasn't enough for him to want to wait. My sister was a teenage girl, maturing at exactly the rate that was expected. Her boyfriend, on the other hand, was oddly enough, far past her.

I was going completely off of assumptions and a few diary entries, so I might have been wrong. But seeing him didn't lie. He didn't touch her in public, he didn't look at her, didn't whisper sweet things to her, show any kind of affection. I figured he was either cheating, gay, or impotent. It didn't take too long for me to notice that he kept glancing at me. I almost snorted. But kept my composure. This was bound to be fun if the glances meant what I thought they meant. Eventually they got too long to possibly be appropriate.

Sakura lacked any kind of grace. She had the cute little dumb girl charm that might have gotten her some boyfriends, but I observed enough to get at least a vague idea of what Li was like. He didn't seem like someone who would be into the bubbly little bitch type. Once again, I might have been infinitely wrong. But his eyes didn't lie.

He was often at our house. I fuck with people's heads as a hobby, so I'd eat too slow, lick my lips too often, run my hands through my hair. A youth on the brink of alleged sexual experimentation wouldn't need much. Peripheral vision is a beautiful thing. I didn't have to actually look to see that he was staring. Or even more obviously, stealing furtive little glances. Dad was blissfully unaware as he always is. Sakura - too busy having a minimal attention span to notice. It was as if God was insisting I do this. Sakura was always looking anywhere but him. And he was always looking at me. So finally everything boiled down to the bathroom where Li showed me how responsive he could get. It took nothing. Marginal effort. I exaggerate a few movements, give him one look and he's turning the color of a fucking tomato and running off "to use the facilities".

I decide to follow, just to be a bother, and surely as another sign from God - he doesn't lock the bathroom door. Doesn't even close it completely. The poor boy. He had no idea what he had gotten himself into. Was it ever amusing. He arched his back just the right way. Moaned at just the right times. It lasted all of a few minutes, because I obviously cut him short, but not entirely to tease him. Then was the first time that my control wavered. Ever so slightly. Nothing I couldn't handle.

The bathroom scene was my first slip. I let it get too far, my choice of words, perhaps too encouraging. I didn't expect him to actually follow through with it. But he did, being the stubborn little cunt that he is. So I allowed another slip, the next day at the park. It was faster then. Less inhibited. But essentially the bathroom had repeated itself. Arching, instant hardness, need. He lied too well when we were almost caught by Sakura. Perhaps, not well, but quickly. On instinct. He had to save his ass. My sister of course noticed nothing.

Not to say I blame her stupidity for it all - no. She isn't quite as dumb as she leads on. This was more a thing that she wouldn't want to believe. The idea itself - utterly ridiculous. Impossible. She would believe anything over this. Just because anything else would be more likely. Her boyfriend couldn't be gay. Least of all with her brother. Unless of course she saw it with her very own eyes.

The very next day he's there again. Willing wide-eyed virgin. On my fucking doorstep. So I indulge once more. A little too deeply. That time I really didn't think. There wasn't enough time to sit down and weigh out and assess. It was too "for the thrill", too fast, too heated. I got him off in less than maybe six minutes. Though I honestly had no idea that my sister's beau had it in him to twist quite like that. Remain in that position for that long - no less.

I hate it when something gets out of control. I usually don't allow it. But he was just so willing. And so delicious. And so thin, toned and sinfully adolescent. I began catching myself thinking about him. Wondering about the next call. It had to stop. And then he finally called and I was off running. It wasn't me. I didn't come to anyone. People came to me. They crawled, if I willed it. But this was a moment of profound weakness. Something I'd never allow. But there was something about him. Something desperate. Addictive.

So I let myself once more. It was shamefully easy. Like taking candy from a kid. Like beating up losers back in high school for their lunch money. I almost pitied him and his unadulterated willingness. How completely infatuated he appeared. Practically begging for it. So I decided to fuck with his head a little more. But somewhere along the way something happened. Perhaps I let myself too much. My original idea was to leave shortly afterwards. But something stopped me. It might have been him looking like a lost puppy. Cold and shivering and pathetic. I was almost amazed at how quickly I stripped away the cold exterior. The façade that he liked so much to hide behind. The youthful mask of coldness. I knew that there had to be something warm and fuzzy under it. In his case not quite warm and not quite fuzzy. More needing and hopeless and carnal.

I took him. On the park bench. I got him off for the second time. He arched and whined and fucked my hand. And kissed me. Only virgins kiss like that. In that intense, shuddering way that wants more than anything to convey the pleasure you just caused. He then slid down me and proceeded to suck me off. I didn't expect it. I didn't want it. But he's got such great lips. Then the episode ended because I suddenly realized the full extent of what I was allowing to happen. I panicked.

I don't panic. Ever. I avoid situations in which I could lose face. And panicking is losing face. It was never an intended part of the equation. I pushed him off and ran home. He called my name, and this time he was really begging. I couldn't turn around. I didn't have it in me to face him again. That brings me to now. Two hours and eleven consecutive cigarettes later. I still can't sleep. My mind replays the episode over and over again. I bit his neck too hard. Hugged him too tight. Kissed him too deep. These things don't happen to me. I retain control. I don't get in way over my head. I don't get in over my head period.

Apparently I do. I panicked. I fucking panicked. Denial is edgy and uncomfortable. I hate it. I'm an adult for fuck's sake. These games are getting a little dangerous. He's my little sister's boyfriend. I'm going straight to hell. Aside from the simple fact that he is legally too young for me I should also have better taste than that. But we all have our guilty pleasures.

For once, in a long time, my calculated plan of action slips and breaks and I'm left with a mess. The detail is blurred. It's all blurred. I'm on my bed, watching the smoke emitted from my lips lazily float upwards to join the mass that's already suspended below my ceiling. I'm annoyed. I don't need this kind of bullshit to get out of hand because he gave me the puppy-dog stare a few times. I'm better than that. I'm smarter than that. I know what I'm doing.

Clearly not.

I sharply stub the half-smoked cigarette out in the ashtray. The concept of not being able to change this is new and ridiculous to me. I don't like it at all. I'm not playing anymore. And that's what makes it so much worse. The fact that it's no longer a game for my amusement. But I do remain in power here. If not absolute power. I can end it. Now. This very fucking second. And not need to worry about Sakura finding out, or him ever touching me again. I'll just stop.

Sleep doesn't come for hours. I can't sleep when something is picking at me. I wonder. Mostly trying to figure out how I'll avoid Li for the next couple weeks until I'm off to university. But eventually I drift off, tiredly, shakily, without having come to any sensible conclusion. Except that I need to end it. Somehow.

A/N: R&R. Reviews will make me want to finish chapter six. And it's almost dooooneeee...


	6. Missing

**Abandon**

_a·ban·don _

_1. vt: leave somebody behind_

_2. vt: leave a place because of danger_

_3. vt: halt something in progress_

_4. vt: give in to emotion_

_n: lack of restraint: complete lack of inhibition or self-restraint_

Warnings: Lime. Not the kind you'd expect though, in this one.

Disclaimer: I own none of it.

**Missing**

The sensation reminds me of a drug. Something of low quality, cheaply made, and highly addictive. Dirty. Disgusting. A hallucinogen of some sort. So addictive that it's impossible to say no after the first try. The first slip. It's hard to even think it. You just do. And all the while, you know exactly what is in it, and the smell, that becomes familiar as family within too short a time. And it's all want want want, without any solid thought spared to the consequences. The punishment. The shit that you can't run from forever unless you stop this immediate second. But the higher the high the lower the low. When you re seeing incredible things and thinking incredible thoughts you couldn't give three shining shits how you got there and how many chemicals are currently floating through your veins though they really, seriously shouldn't even be there. You're mesmerized, enraptured, consumed in this ridiculous thing of feeling, or sensation, and sometimes lack thereof. Not a sensation but more the awareness of something happening, and the realization that you should be able to feel it. But you don't. And then it wears off and you're spiraling down with all of your bullshit hallucinations and feeling and not feeling and it's all over. Then withdrawal. The stage that I think I'm currently at.

He isn't sexy. He isn't attractive. He isn't anything. He is a big fucking problem. An issue. A catastrophe. A bloody natural disaster, if you will. The natural disaster that raged around the area of the top of my neck, closer to my ear the last time I saw him. The natural disaster that came and left within the time that it took me to come, and then get thoroughly and irrevocably ditched abruptly afterwards. The natural disaster in the face of huge, angry-purple-red welts on my skin. Have you ever tried to get away with a turtleneck in the summer?

This was a week ago. Another longest of my lifetime. I find it plenty amusing how with him time is either moments, snippets, or years. It's divided into strictly the encounters, and the parts in between, the encounters being the world-changing five minute episodes of my life, and the parts in between being the longest ever. Longest ever anything. Because this involves waiting. And uncertainty. And in this particular case - the nursing of hickeys from hell.

It took some kissing and two hand jobs to knock me and my relatively steady life and relationship completely and utterly off center. To dismember the way I feel, the way I function, the way I act. To completely undermine my whole mentality. To make everything so different than what it was not so long ago when all I did was look. When looking didn't hurt and turn into touching and kissing and making my hips move with the motions of his hand as he nipped my earlobe and whispered fittingly dirty things. In retrospect, I think I'm a cheap slut. It didn't take much convincing at all. I gave myself to him pretty easily. Just because he has his stupid crazy way of magnetizing you to him. He knows how and where to touch and how hard and how light and when and what to say. So much for hard to get. So much for cool, calm and collected. So much a successful relationship with a sweet girl I like. So much for not opening my legs to her older brother and letting him do what ever the hell he pleased.

I couldn't see Sakura for the whole week. Not until the hickeys were gone. The toxic purple reminders of how sharp his teeth are and how good he felt. Not that I really would see her even if I was able to. Now that I think about it, she probably wouldn't question the turtleneck story. I'd ask to see her closer to the evening. My excuse would be the cold. I'm getting too good at this. Lying. And she wouldn't suspect anything. She has no real reason to. We trust each other. And if she does suspect, and then dump my sorry ass for cheating at least she won't know who it was with. For her sake, I hope she never finds out. And maybe for mine too, a little.

I've been pretending to be sick. And she called me every goddamn day of the week seeing how I was. She offered to come by with chicken soup and be with me because I couldn't go out. I almost told her. Right then and there, that I don't deserve her. That she can find someone else. Someone who isn't a freak with multiple personalities and control issues and doesn't want to get fucked by her older brother. And of course I didn't because on top of all the other things infinitely wrong with me I'm also a coward. I told her that she couldn't come over because I was contagious, instead. And then she told me she missed me. And that she was worried that something was wrong, and that she wanted me to feel free to talk to her, because what ever it was she would understand. I said nothing because it hurt to talk for a little while. She waited. And then repeated that if there was anything at all that troubled me, she was always there to help. I said thanks, but I'm fine. I'm just sick. And I said I had to go because I needed to cook dinner. I didn't actually need to cook dinner. But I lost count of all the times I had already lied to her. It didn't matter. It was too trivial to feel substantially guilty about, because there were so many other things.

When I gently replaced the receiver I felt like I wanted to cry. Because I was doing these terrible things to her and to myself and because I was so unbearably guilty that every time she said something sweet I felt the sting behind my eyes. I buried my face in my hands and swallowed the lump forming at the base of my throat. Blinked away the excess moisture that I refused to call tears and sighed. The rest of that day was spent reading some old mystery novel I found in one of my drawers. Just killing time with anything that didn't make me think of guilt.

And the next day my phone is ringing again, and I'm of course hoping that it's him but know it won't be. I lift the receiver and put it to my ear.

"Hello." I sound fittingly tired.

"Hi. How've you been?" Sakura's concerned voice. She cares. And actually wants to know.

"Oh hey… I'm not bad." I fake a cough. "Just on some meds. It's getting better though. I should be fine soon." Lies. I can't deal with myself.

"I hope you get better. I haven't seen you much lately. I just wish I could be with you. Just for a little while." She sounds like an upset little girl.

"Hey don't worry," My voice softens and I feel myself smiling faintly at the phone. As if it'll change anything. "I'll get better and we'll go catch a movie or something. Or we could take a walk in the park." _Or __go __back __to __my __house __so __I __can __spend __the __rest __of __the __day __going __down __on __you __because __your __brother __won't __let __me __do __that __to __him __anymore_- I mentally add and immediately wince at how terrible I'm being.

"Yeah I'd like that." I can hear the smile in her voice. "I can't wait. I want to see you as much as I can before school starts. We'll have less time to hang out then."

"Don't think about that." I say quietly. And think about what she must look like, sitting on her bed, holding her phone with both hands. Her hands are so small. She is generally small. Petite. Adorable. Quite the contrast to her brother. Who - as I'm noticing - I think about every two seconds. Then I hear a click at her end of the line and it's the familiar sound of someone picking up another phone.

"Get off the phone. I need it." his voice. In a fraction of a second, no, less, my heart is hammering against my ribcage and my stomach drops and I feel all color drain from my face. His smooth, low voice. His tone - casually commanding, as always. Images of our last encounter are flashing in my mind. It's like a wave. A fucking wave of need and it's eating me alive and I don't know what the hell to do.

"We were just finishing." I reply before Sakura does. My voice betrays nothing of what I'm currently feeling and in that moment I'm infinitely thankful for small miracles.

"God Touya! Hang up!" Sakura whines.

"You have two minutes." he says. Carelessly. I almost hate him. It's so hard not to. Another click and he's gone. And I feel as if I just ran a marathon because I can't feel my lungs and there isn't enough air and I'm hot and cold. It passed. I survived. Just barely.

"I'm sorry. I have to go in a little while. Touya is being pissy." she says his name and I already forget what the rest of what she was saying.

"Come over." My voice sounds alien to me. I'm not doing this.

"I'd love to hang out, but it's late. And you're still sick, I don't want to disturb you." Sakura tries to rationalize her way out of something she really wants to do.

"Just sneak out. I really need to see you." Apparently I am, in fact, doing this. I remember saying something similar to Touya and make a mental remark about the irony of the situation.

"I don't know about this…" And just like that. I know she'll be here within half an hour.

She is here. And I'm kissing her. But this is totally new. This isn't the chaste-occasional kiss on the lips that we do sometimes. This is the kiss that she's never had before. My tongue is touching hers none at all tentatively, and she isn't quite sure how to respond but - callous as it is - I don't care. I show her. I grab her, my hands quickly unbuttoning her cardigan and slipping under her shirt to knead her breasts. She allows me. I'm honestly surprised. Or rather, would be if I had time to stop and think about what she thinks of this whole thing. I pull away and begin kissing down the side of her neck. She's mewing. The sound can't be interpreted as anything else. She wants to say something but can't really get it out between labored breaths.

"Li… Why… Oh…" she never finishes her sentence because I push her down onto my bed and begin kissing down down down…

It's thankfully dark. Because I don't want to see her. After the whole thing is over I can't think. She's still breathing heavily and lying beside me and not questioning me. I'm scared of myself. I turn my face away from her and start wishing that I wasn't here.

She was too virgin for this. She has never gone even half this far with anyone else. Instead of confessing about cheating on her, or ending the relationship I tied her to myself further yet. Because I'm a selfish bastard. Because I needed to be with someone, after hearing his voice. I needed to drown myself in someone else's release and not have to spend the night alone. So I forced on her what he didn't let me finish. I went down on her. It was all over in twenty minutes. She didn't know how to react because she'd never had it before. So she just made little sounds. And I fervently thanked God that it was dark for a number of reasons. The dominant one being that I didn't want to know what her face looked like with mine between her thighs. I didn't want to see her period. This wasn't about her. Then again, lately everything wasn't about her. Or rather, about no one but me. My precious self. _My _inner struggle. _My _guilt. _My _mistakes.

Sakura just let me. She didn't ask questions. She just allowed me to do what ever it was that I wanted. This gave the guilt it's most recent flavor. She just _let__me_Not for once stopping to question my judgment, to ask herself what _she_ wanted, to figure out how comfortable she was with the whole thing. And I know she wasn't ready for it. I knew it before I did this to her, but of course that had no bearing on the final outcome. It was all about me and what I needed at that point and how hard my life was, boo _fucking_ hoo.

But worse yet, was the sudden realization that she didn't allow it for herself. Sakura, despite not always being at her most mature, had a profound sense of when someone was troubled. And it's not as if I'm a good enough actor to have been able to hide it from her anyway. She knew, she asked me about it, offered her help, but I of course didn't succumb. So she handled it the only other way. Personal sacrifice.

This realization is something new. If it was at all possible to feel worse, I didn't think so until now. I'm ear-deep in shit, and I brought it upon myself, but instead of making everything right, or at least doing something plausibly honest, I just keep doing this to myself. And I'm making the only person that I care about suffer because of me. This is new, because up until this point I wasn't doing anything openly terrible to her. Sure cheating took the cake for a while, but what she didn't know couldn't hurt her. At that point the only person it was really hurting was me, but I only had myself to blame so all was fine and dandy. And now it can hurt her too. She let me do this, to make me feel better, because she didn't see any other way around it. And her stupid little sacrifice, that in the end harmed her more than it improved my mood, was a waste. It's all too convoluted for me. Too full of ridiculous irony. Entirely pointless and stupid, this whole thing.

Her breathing is no longer ragged. She is fully dressed. And lying beside me and looking and me. Gently. I suddenly wish that she hated me. This would be much easier to bear if she stopped acting as if I deserved her. Silence is pressing.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she inquires softly, and it genuinely sounds like I have a choice.

"I can't." I choke out. This is the icing on the cake. She sacrifices her comfort and emotional stability to get me to open up, to help me somehow, and I don't. _I'm __doing __this __to __protect __her _I tell myself silently. I chant it in my head because there is no other excuse for me to be making this worse for her. I'm doing this because if I tell her what's really going on she will be destroyed. Everything seems to contradict itself.

"I understand." she whispers, and moves away. I don't want to believe that she is actually being sensitive towards me. "I should probably go sneak back into my house." she says, with a smile in her voice. I'm, for the tenth time, fervently thankful that it's dark in the room.

"I should probably come-" I begin hoarsely.

"No." she declines, in a way that implies no room for argument. "You don't have to walk me. I'm fine on my own, it's a short walk. You need some rest, and some time alone. Call me when you're ready to talk." then, as if to try to cover up a blunder she adds, "Or just call me. I'm always happy to hear from you." she finishes, and I feel like someone is slowly pulling my entrails out of me. She's being mature, and understanding, and careful not to push me. My chest tightens, and I can't even say anything, because I don't want to sound anything but emotionless. Sakura cannot find out.

"Goodnight Li." she says over her shoulder, leaving the room. I don't get up to see her off.

My turtleneck feels stifling. I pull it off hastily, throwing it across the room. It lands on the floor, because I wasn't throwing it at anything in particular. I feel an overwhelming need to break things. I don't deserve a fraction of how sensitive she's being towards me. If she knew she would never want to speak to me again. I'm taking her for granted, and I know I am, but I still do it. Because it seems like an alarmingly good idea to make her never want to speak to me again. But I can't hurt her that way. It's easier to do this than to confess. I want her to be angry. To not care about me so fucking _unconditionall__y i_n that inane, selfless way of hers that characterizes her so well. My silly, violated little Sakura.

The further I get, the more she seems to want to help me. With her trust and faith in my reasoning. In me. Christ, if she only knew. This was the ultimate way to make it harder for myself. Now, a confession is the last thing that'll help. If before, it was still at least a halfway plausible choice, now it's out of the question completely. What will I say? _Sorry __babe, __I __cheated __on __you __with __a __person __who's __identity __I __won't __be __divulging __and __then __ate __you __out __to __make __my self __feel __better __about __it. __All __a __horrible __mistake __really._

I sit on the edge of my bed, leaning over my knees, holding my head in my hands. I'm not making sense to myself. This is all a joke. A long, drawn out prank that stopped being funny disturbingly fast. I don't have any real motive for what I did to her tonight. Aside from hearing her brother's voice and wanting nothing more than for him to turn me into his whore again. And on account of me not being able to beg him to humiliate me again, I instead decided to violate my adoring, understanding girlfriend. To have a body for the night. For comfort.

Guilt is exhausting. I fall back on my bed and look up at the ceiling. Hoping to find answers, I guess. The lump in my throat is threatening to choke me. I'm a fucking wreck. I want to hug her. Right now. I miss her face and her warmth. My eyes are stinging violently. A lone tear slips from the corner of my eye and skates across my temple as something occurs to me. It's not her that I miss. It's him.

A/N: Think about this one folks. If I didn't make it obvious in the last few chapters, I hope it's clear now. "Cute" isn't what I'm going for in this story.


	7. Faults

**Abandon**

_a·ban·don _

_1. vt: leave somebody behind_

_2. vt: leave a place because of danger_

_3. vt: halt something in progress_

_4. vt: give in to emotion_

_n: lack of restraint: complete lack of inhibition or self-restraint_

A/N: This one took quite a while. I wrote it to two songs, both of which I highly recommend listening to. Bloc Party - Compliments, and Feist - The Water. The latter fits the story slightly better, so I advise all of you to listen to the song while reading. It puts everything in perspective, at least for me.

Warnings: Lime. But strong lime. Short lemon almost. Again not the usual pairing.

Disclaimer: I own none of it.

**Faults**

My fingers are trailing the writing. I never normally do this, but this time I feel like the text is slipping past my eyes and it's almost as if I need to hold on to it. I thought I would skip the next few pages. But I'm not skipping anything. I'm reading. Hungrily eating up every word scrawled in her diary in an awkward, girly cursive. The text is swimming. I can't concentrate. However, the general idea manages to penetrate my raging denial. I don't feel a surge of protectiveness towards my sister. I realize she didn't have to let him. I back out of having to act the older brother too fast. It's a little bit of a problem. She knew something was wrong and she let him just… take advantage. I don't want to think about it. I can't. It's my sister. And it's him.

I didn't stop to realize that it mattered. I never thought that maybe, it meant something to me that he never got with her. It's never been something obvious. I didn't think that I felt a strange gratification at the fact that I was giving him something she wasn't. As wrong as it was, I wanted to be the person that he worshipped for that. I felt completely confident that she wouldn't give him any, and thought that if I played with him a little he would come to me. And he did. And then I proceeded to neatly get him into this mess.

At that moment I feel as juvenile as he should probably be. I feel like a teenage boy who was fucked with and didn't realize it until a little while later and just feels so dumb for it. It was a ridiculous thing to overlook really. It's embarrassing. It is. Because it's so much harder for adults to accept stupid mistakes. Silly little errors that any _decent_adult wouldn't make. But what adult am I. I'm stuck in a limbo between the two great epic parts of life. The youth and the adulthood. I want to still be that amazing age of 18 when you think you'll take on the whole world. Just wait 'til you get out of university with a degree in something or other and you'll be set for a life that no one else will have. Because you won't make your parents mistakes and of course you'll live it to the fullest. And now I think I'm doing something okay with myself, going off to finally get that degree after two years of thinking and trying to find myself and all the odd jobs and all the soul searching that eventually ended up in a bar with a drink. And as a finishing touch, a grand exit of sorts, I do this to my sister and her stupid little boyfriend who I happened to think was too pretty to leave the fuck alone.

Snapping the book closed, I get up. I'm annoyed. That it had to get this overwhelmingly far so quickly and so carefully that I didn't notice, that she got hurt because of it, that he actually succumbed. As little intelligence as I credited my sister with, I had always figured that she was an uncannily good judge of character. When she began dating him it only seemed natural that she was with someone in whom she could invest at least a fraction of her boundless trust. But there is of course something more overpowering than the irritation and vague guilt, and that's the awesome juvenile sense of jealousy. The mistake that I made, the feeling I didn't see because it wasn't there until they actually had a sexual encounter. And I feel every bit the arrogant little fucker that I was in high school, with too much pride and too little motive for anything I did. I screwed up and never admitted it, never apologized, never let myself lose face. Doing any of these things would mean actually allowing the idea of a fault of _mine_ It was all juvenile back then. Admitting fault wasn't cool. Everyone seemed to grow up out of that stupid kid stage but I lingered. I've been lingering for years. Not admitting fault. Especially as of late. And lingering in general. Not being able to decide. Afraid of making the wrong decision because that would mean screwing up and absolutely _having_to admit it.

And so I constructed a fragile balance for myself to exist in my little limbo before I take the plunge. But calling it 'the plunge' makes it sound so dramatic. I needed some kind of step, a movement forward from the place that didn't seem to be changing in the last two years. I didn't really change after high school. I changed but I didn't. In high school I didn't have to deal with consequence. Once I got out, it bit me in the ass almost immediately. Demanding attention, maturity, acceptance. I'm not used to paying for my mistakes. I ran from it as much as I possibly could, while I was still considered a kid. And now I'm not a kid anymore, and I need to fucking own up, and accept, but I hate it. I'm not used to responsibility and it's killing me. And I fucked up this time too, driving my sister's boyfriend to basically violate her, and what I love most about this whole ridiculous mess is that I don't care. That I'm still the ego-centric, narcissistic bastard that graduated two years ago, and that all that's currently bothering me is that the attention isn't accentuated on me. That he just had her instead and that I'm jealous, instead of feeling protective of my younger sister. But she mentioned in her diary that there was something wrong with him. And I know it's me because I just withdrew and panicked and fucked everything over. But the last call is his and he isn't making it. As it turns out, I made him every bit the coward that I am, so he's running from consequence, lying to her, _using _her, and it's my fault.

Of course I withdrew. Left him to deal with the shit that I started and of which I later conveniently washed my hands clean. At the moment it suited me. He's now ear-deep in shit, too scared to end his relationship with Sakura, and swimming in guilt. I didn't mean for this to happen. I meant to just fuck with everything a little bit and then let it go. Have my fun and leave. But moderation never really stuck with me as a conscious choice. I'm no expert (though I might have fancied myself one in the past) at stopping myself before it gets too far, but neither is he. The beauty is that he can get away with it, he's still a kid. I'm the one having to face the consequences this time.

I'm putting on clothes. Buttons aren't staying in the grasp of my fingers because I'm too antsy. In my irritation I throw the button-down in the general direction of my closet and reach for a regular t-shirt. Something easier to deal with than buttons. Then jeans, a belt, some cologne. I glimpse at myself in the mirror and don't like what I see. I've never seemed uglier to myself in my entire life. My cologne smells clean. I never liked pungent scents. It always felt as if men wore especially manly cologne to prove something. I never needed to prove my masculinity to anyone and didn't feel as if I was any more feminine wearing something that smelled clean. Chicks always loved it. Guys didn't notice enough to care. But women are more sensitive towards… everything. Emotion, sound, scent. I'm still staring in the mirror and I think of Li, in all of his gentle teenage androgyny. How he's thin and has disconcertingly narrow shoulders for a boy his age, and how his hip-bones jut out just so. And he has large, expressive eyes that only seem to ever express when I'm touching him. And a weak, womanly mouth, and… I wonder absently about how I even managed to get to Li from women. And then realize that thinking of a certain sensitivity, I remember, too well, perhaps, how he responds to sensory contact in specific places. He is probably most feminine in that respect.

Everyone is out. Sakura is at the movies with her friends, dad - at work. I'm not working today. The book store didn't immediately require my presence tonight. I fall on my bed and dial Yuki's number. Much too lazy to hold the phone to my head, I press the speaker button and lay the receiver beside me.

"Hello?"

"I'm free today." I say, absently letting my fingers play with the hemp bracelet hanging off my wrist. I always had such skinny fucking wrists.

"Oh hey. Yeah. Come over. I'm rolling." he's as serene as always.

"Alright I'll be there in a bit." we hang up sans goodbyes.

It's raining loudly. The sound is muted, because I'm standing in the middle of his living room, all windows closed. And watching my best friend, confidant and partner in crime, sitting cross-legged on the hardwood floor, rolling what will surely be a reasonably thick joint. He looks up at me and smiles his smile, hands halting their careful movement of arranging weed on the paper for the few moments that it takes. Yuki had always deemed smiling so important. So purposeful. His smile had a certain power. He mastered it so completely that it's many purposes ranged from just making someone's day a little better, to convincing, and finally to manipulation if it suited him. Today it's a form of greeting. The corners of my lips creep upwards, needless to say - involuntarily, in what I'm assuming is a soft grimace if compared to what he's got on his face.

He resumes his rolling, as slowly and carefully as before, as I plop down on the floor beside him, leaning back on my hands. Music is playing in the background. Jazz. He's so refined, the fucker.

"So what did you do this time?" he asks conversationally, a smile in his voice, a tone that implies nothing more than something about the weather.

"What are you talking about?" I'm not a very good liar. It's easier to be brutally honest.

"Oh don't be ridiculous." Yuki gives a small chuckle. I'd always felt younger compared to him. He continues just as conversationally as he started, "You don't call me up, telling me you've got nothing planned and that you want to hang out, _just_ for the sole purpose of hanging out."

"I fucked up." the resignation can't be more obvious.

"Surprise, surprise." he's probably the only person that can ever get away with that kind of sarcasm around me.

"Oh no. This is serious. I'm really screwed." Eloquent, more like.

"Oh?" vague disbelief.

"Yeah. You know Sakura's boyfriend?"

"You didn't…" this causes him to cease his rolling and turn to me, with a look of utter astonishment on his face.

"I unfortunately did. And the kid's got quite a mouth on him…" I sigh because I remember exactly how he looks with his lips wrapped around my… I think no further of it.

"Touya…" he's smiling again, but it's an incredulous smile this time.

"Believe me I know. I know very well what I did. Now everything is fucked up. 'Cause she let him eat her out and she didn't want to but she thought it would make him feel better and he's fucking guilty and not dumping her. This whole fucking thing is insane." I blurt out. He's just staring at me.

"You need to stop reading her diary, for one thing. Secondly, I think out of all the stupid, heartless, mean things that you've ever done, this one probably takes the cake." he states matter-of-factly, once again calmly resuming, lifting the paper to his lips to lick the edge.

"Thanks." I roll my eyes.

"You just fucked up a perfectly good thing for your sister. Granted she's not the brightest bulb in the box, that shouldn't reduce her chances of getting a boyfriend she can be happy with. And it's certainly not up to you to decide whether it does or it doesn't." he admonishes, serenely as ever, sticking the pokey that he'd just produced from his pocket into the half-rolled joint.

"You're just full of useful information today aren't you." I mutter, not particularly interested in hearing what I did wrong.

"That's always the case." His gaze flickers to me and back to the task at hand as he smiles. "But really. I'm curious as to how you're going to fix this, seeing as there isn't much you can change without exposing yourself. And if anything it'll scar her to find out that her brother actually _stole_ her boyfriend from her." his tone is once again gently admonishing. "For fuck's sake, Touya. Aren't you a little bit too old for this shit? And though it may have escaped you, you are, in fact, too old for _him_."

"It'd be great if you could, oh I don't know, say, fuck off with the reprimands?" biting irritation. "I didn't come here to hear this bullshit."

"You're right, of course. You came here to smoke a gram and a half, and tell me all about your problems, shortly after which you will decide to get drunk, because with you one usually follows the other, and then we'll fuck, you on top, as always, and you'll want to go out, because the high and the buzz will simultaneously wear off and the fun can't end just yet." he said, with all of his knowing insouciance that should have been infuriating, but never really was.

"In that case, finish rolling so we can be on our way." I smirk.

He's taller than Li. It's a thought that can't leave my intoxicated mind alone for a minute as I push in and pull out of him. Everything is slick with sweat, and in some cases lube, and the inside of my brain feels sort of slippery as well, because no thoughts stick but the ones about my sister's boyfriend.

I'm fucking him slowly. My temporarily depleted coordination only allows a slow, steady rhythm that makes him whisper dirty things, while staring straight into my eyes. Yuki's never been a top. He doesn't bother. It suits him so much better to have his legs on my shoulders, shuddering under my weight and moaning my name. And sometimes swearwords. He likes it this way. And I like to be in control.

I think of how I would love it so much more if it was Li writhing under me, because that's what he'd be doing. Writhing. He's less used to it. His legs wouldn't be on my shoulders, and he wouldn't be leaning back as comfortably as Yuki is. He'd be clinging to me, legs wrapped tightly around my waist, face buried in my neck and whining. Pleading. Perhaps a light smattering of swearwords, to accentuate quite how badly he wants me to fuck him _deeper_. He'd be pleading and praising, being the little bitch that he is. Offering, as usual. Allowing. All that. And he's so good at it. At being weak and powerless. At playing the perfect whore. It's in a way, powerful. But only in a way.

I dimly realize that Li involuntarily plays on one of my greatest desires. Being put on a pedestal. Worshipped. But I suppose all humans would like nothing but to be worshipped. It feeds the ego. And deep inside, we're all self-centered ego-maniacs. For people like me it may not even be that deep inside.

My movement quickens, and he moans louder, and I honestly didn't think my coordination would allow it, but at this stage of intoxication I still want an orgasm more than just to fall asleep. And in about five minutes it's over, I come inside him, suck him off until he's fisting his hands into my hair and moaning God's name very much in vain, and we slump against each other breathing heavily. His hands had relinquished their death grip on my hair and are now softly running through it. The motion is incredibly soothing.

All at once, the lack of sleep and fatigue and emotional strain and blame gang up on me, and I'm really tired, because both the high and the buzz are wearing off, and his skin smells so good. It's still raining outside. I don't want to move. I'm being weighed down by everything I did to Li up to this point, and accepting fault is never easy. But I'm really in no hurry to accept.

A/N: And that would be all for this one. It took me a while to pluck up the inspiration, but here it is. I'm proud of this one.


	8. Penance

**Abandon**

_a·ban·don_

_1. vt: leave somebody behind_

_2. vt: leave a place because of danger_

_3. vt: halt something in progress_

_4. vt: give in to emotion_

_n: lack of restraint: complete lack of inhibition or self-restraint_

A/N: The hardest thing I've ever had to write. Just gut-wrenching. But I'm back.

Warnings: Intense subject matter, lemony, a lot of inappropriate language.

Disclaimer: I... Really don't own this. At all.

**Penance**

I haven't slept and it shows. Two days after seeing Sakura last, and the marks have faded substantially, but are still there. It hasn't stopped raining since yesterday, and I must've eaten at least half the ice cream we had in the house, because this isn't getting any better. I'm sick with him and I'm falling apart. He's destroying me and isn't even here to do it. Just the thought of him.

Nothing is good anymore. Nothing is even remotely calming or relaxing. I can't sleep or concentrate and this horrible, creeping shame is everywhere. Not letting me forget. Or not think about him for even a minute.

On the second sleepless morning I come to a decision. And it's not really weighing the pros and cons and deciding on the best possible choice. It's realizing that I don't have a choice in the matter. This isn't living. Gorging myself on ice cream and lamenting how guilty I am. Cheating on my girlfriend and living with the secret isn't how I intended this relationship to work out. I hurt her. And hurt myself by hurting her. And just hurt myself all around from then on. All because her brother was there. But I won't blame it on him. I can't. I couldn't bare to shift blame on to someone else. It was a conscious choice every step of the way, regardless of how good he looked at any given time or how much that made me want to touch him.

I'm lying on my bed in a tangle of sheets, staring straight up, not blinking. It's all very noble, this confession, but I know that at the end of the day it's all for me. At first the fear and guilt hit too hard, I panicked, and immediately swore off telling her. But after forty eight consecutive hours of thinking, I'm not scared anymore. I believe the biblical term for what I'm doing to myself here is penance. Once I tell her, and suffer what ever she has to throw at me, at least I'll be able to breathe. The relationship will end, she'll eventually simmer down, and this will all blow over. Of course, I'll smartly withhold some of the more unfortunate details, like the fact that I cheated with a guy, and that it was her brother. Partial penance then.

And once again I'm nothing more than a cheating asshole, an altruist, hoping that she will dump me as soon as she hears of my infidelity, so that _I _can breathe easier, so that _I _can sleep at night. But to be fair, this is unbearable. It comes down to whether I can hurt her now, or I can hurt her later, because something this volatile won't stay down. The guilt won't ease with time. There's no rationalizing myself into thinking that maybe it wasn't my fault and I was ravaged by big bad Touya repeatedly. I'm pushed myself into a corner and the minimally painful outcome isn't all that minimal. I'm at the end of my rope. My resolve dwindled down with the lack of sleep and utter desperation.

It's early afternoon, and everything is bleak. There is no sun, the sky is a pale backlit grey that doesn't allow much light to filter through the clouds. It's raining harder than it has all summer and it's as if the weather mirrors what is currently going on inside my head. I drag myself out of bed, and into the bathroom for a shower. The water is almost scalding. I shrink away, at first, but lean back in a little later. It burns, and I don't actually want it this hot, but I figure penance doesn't wait. Though I suppose a really hot shower doesn't count as penance, per se.

Once out of the shower, I grab a track suit from one of my drawers and put it on. What I look like right now is entirely irrelevant. If at first, I was somewhat irresolute about doing this, I'm not anymore. I've fucked with her enough. I need to tell her, so that she dumps me, and we can both be on our merry way to recovery. I need to hurt her now, to stop this from going any further. It may not be pretty, but it has to work. Otherwise I've got nothing else.

I consider my image in the mirror for a while. Dark circles under my eyes, slightly sunken cheeks, almost gaunt in appearance. And there is no one to blame for this but myself. Myself and my instability. My total lack of backbone. My weakness. All qualities that one person managed to bring out in me quickly, harshly, and simultaneously. I consider my image for another while, and refrain from blaming him for turning me into his bitch. I'd much rather blame myself for allowing it. Allowing myself to be rendered completely powerless with a few touches. And loving it more than I ever loved anything else in my entire life.

Blame is a horrible thing. It's a heavy burden to bear. And in my case it's also awfully lonely, because I blame myself for all of this with a perverse, morbid kind of enthusiasm. This kind of thing needs to be hung over someone's head. It doesn't happen by accident. Someone is responsible for it, and since I've been bearing most other necessary and unnecessary responsibilities in my life, I can't help but bear this one too. Pointing the finger at Touya would be too easy. I could have walked away. Even though it seemed thoroughly impossible at the time.

I'm so completely exhausted that there is a dull ache behind my eyes. I look pathetic. I feel even more so. I'm bursting with pain and guilt, and I don't care that it's raining out, or that I look like shit, or that I haven't slept. I need to tell her. I need to get it off my chest, so maybe I could breathe again. Or sleep. And afterwards, slowly commence the agonizing process of getting over wanting to suck my girlfriend's brother dry. And all the while, the latter seems like the foggiest part of my plan in terms of execution.

The front door slams shut behind me and I lock up, key fitting into it's rightful place only on the third try. I leave for Sakura's feeling every bit the selfish asshole that I hoped I'd never be. This will be short, sharp and clinical, I tell myself. I'll get in there, tell her, and then leave. I'll give her time to digest and hopefully then she'll put me out of my misery and dump my sorry ass. Something that's been happening to me a lot lately. Really, only once. But for some reason it stings when I think of Touya walking out on me. Ending the relationship with Sakura, albeit regretful, associates with relief more than anything. And once again the wave of shame, the familiar guilt, the self-deprecations. I can't seem to do anything in favor of the situation. It's all for me. I keep trying to mean well, and it backfires. I do things to make myself feel better. Eating her out was a way of making myself feel better about other horrible things that I've done. And all because he impairs my judgment. He indirectly makes me dig myself into a fucking hole. I can't blame him. I deserve this fault for doing what I did. But really it feels as though if it wasn't for him none of this would have happened.

I look down the street in resignation. I'm not used to dreading going to Sakura's.

We're both speechless for a while. Well, I'm speechless. He's just waiting for me to say something.

"Is Sakura home?" I manage weakly.

"She's sleeping over at Meilin's." he replies calmly, his eyes openly judging. I've never regretted forgetting something trivial like calling before I came over more in my entire life.

"Oh…" I breathe, as Mr. Kinomoto pulls out of the driveway waving at us. I feel Touya's presence just feet away from me. And I try to avoid looking at him, because it never leads to any good, but I can't. There are a lot of things I can't seem to be able to do with him around. I'm staring at him, and I feel hunger. Or what's generally associated with it. An overwhelming need, and isolation. Because I can't have, and I feel inadequate. It feels as though all the pain that missing him cost me is concentrated in those few seconds. I didn't think it could reach new highs, but as it appears it can, especially under his scathing gaze.

"Well?" he asks finally, almost in exasperation. I don't have anything to say to that, so instead I do the only thing that seems right to my deprived mind. I hug him. I can't think or function properly without him, so despite all my goals for coming partially clean to Sakura, I end up doing this. Not what's good. Not what's right. But what I can't live without.

He falls back against the doorframe, not having expected this. And this was obviously another one of those things that I did, completely disregarding any sort of consequence. He doesn't hug back and I look up at him. He is no longer cold. Biting his lip, brows furrowed with some emotion that I can't place, he stares at me and looks as if he's… in pain. I, likewise, feel as if I'll actually burst into tears with the humiliation. He raises his hand, and I flinch gently, expecting to be hit, having been so over-sensitized with the lack of sleep and 48 solid hours of mentally abusing myself. But no blow comes. He just touches me. His hand trails into my hair, and I melt into the movement, my whole body going slack against him, my head leaning into his hand as my lips automatically go to kiss it. His other hand comes around me and everything aches. He's warm and alive, and I can't drink it in fast enough. Only now that the tension drains do I realize how wound up I was for such a long time. I moan with the relief, and right afterwards with an entirely different feeling, as his hand makes it's familiar path to the back of my neck, fists into my hair, and he pulls my head back to kiss me.

I'm kissing back and shaking in sheer disbelief that this could actually be happening. Touya is biting at my bottom lip, and it borders on the unpleasant kind of pain. He grabs me, and picks me up, my legs instantly wrapping around his waist and grinding my hips into his in the process. He is panting into my mouth and staring into my eyes as he closes the door, and makes his way towards the stairs. I'm so hard that it hurts the very unpleasant kind of pain. His hand is already under my shirt as he moves up the stairs, the other hand holding onto the railing. His movement slips, he is unguarded. Everything is erratic, breathing, kissing, touching. I don't remember ever hearing Touya make that sound before, when I wrap my legs around him tighter, hips pressing harder into his, and he's gasping, short, sharp gasps. My hands are in his hair, and I don't remember having time to do this either - letting my hands comb through his hair as he ravages my mouth. Well, I remember doing it, but I don't remember having the luxury of really feeling it. It's thick and wonderfully coarse and feels as if it is impossible to tear out, but I'm not trying. I'm just holding his head, and my fingers are just touching his hair and this feels like a very different heaven from the one on the park bench, as I realize, being pressed against his bed, that is surprisingly soft. This is a heaven where there's time for everything, where no touch or sensation is wasted on not being able to appreciate it because any minute someone can walk in. This is a heaven that's just as horrible in all it's following implications, but it's in his bed, and I'm wildly deprived, and he's healing me. All other times he was hurting me.

All sensation is magnified. He kisses me and I moan half from the feeling and half from fulfilled longing to have this. I wanted so badly, and was so sure that he wouldn't come anywhere near me again. But he's here. We're both sitting up to tear at each other's clothes and as soon as his t-shirt is gone I'm feverishly kissing as much skin as I can reach, and this feels familiar. I've been here before. But not like this. Not in broad daylight. Not in his room with him here and all for me.

Touya pushes me down again, quickly sliding my track pants and boxers down all in one go, and I'm effectively naked in front of him. It's both humiliating and sensuous at the same time. My legs are on either side of his, and he's staring at me. This look alone, makes color rise in my cheeks. I've only seen flashes of this. Only short little glances, of when he was really aroused. Eyes dark and brooding, staring at me, and making me feel more vulnerable than ever. There is something deeply carnal about the way he looks at me, trailing his fingers along the bottom of my stomach as I clench my jaw and meet his gaze head on. I'm submitting as all other times, and letting him feel his little power trip off of my shame. But for some reason this time there is something in his face that indicates that he isn't milking this. A barely detectable sadness.

"C-can you-…" my voice catches in my throat as his fingers dip a little lower. "Please…" I can't finish sentences.

"Can I what?" he asks gently, in time with the beginning of his strokes.

"That." I exhale the word, eyes rolling back into my head. "Come here." my voice segues into a whimper as his strokes become slower and slower. He begins leaning into me just as slowly, but I've never had the courage to do anything about it, so I just bite my lip and watch him lower his head, and kiss the middle of my ribcage. And finally he moves up to my neck and my hands go to his hair again, and my hips are involuntarily rising to the rhythm of his strokes.

"Did she do this?" he breathes against my neck, and I know what he's talking about but have a hard time answering right away. The marks. Faded, almost gone. There is a shadow of displeasure in his voice, if I'm hearing correctly.

"N-no-ahh… You did." and I swear he is smiling, I just can't see it. Then he's biting and sucking and I'm now trying to tear his hair out of his head, because it hurts and I love it so much. His hand is tight and slow and hot, and only primitive, monosyllabic words come to mind, because sometimes they are most descriptive. Simple words to describe simple feelings. I'm shaking. I'm still not sure whether this is all a dream, and I just passed out from exhaustion on my bed and right before I come I'll wake up with cold sweat dripping from my forehead. And yet his body shifting downwards and him roughly kissing down my chest seems fairly real, because he doesn't just stop there. He licks a path down from the corner of my hipbone, hitting a pressure point and making my stomach clench in response. His hands snake under my knees to pull them apart, allowing him to kiss my inner thighs, eliciting these ridiculous sounds that I have no control over. He then bites, and it stings. And lingers. But I don't have time to realize that, because he has me down his throat in the next second, and I'm covering my face with my hands to hide. Hide my reaction, and the blood starting to seep from having sunken my teeth into my lip and forgotten to let go. But maybe I'm covering my face for a different reason. To hide something that's harder to hide, perhaps. To hide how much I know I'll regret doing this to myself, and at the same time the knowledge that nothing can make me stop. Push him away.

And it's the last thing I'd dream of doing. Not in the given circumstances anyway. Or really ever. He is sucking, short and fast and systematic, as relentless with his mouth as he is with his hands. My entire body is taught and tense, and somewhere in the back of my mind I figure that my muscles are starting to ache, but it refuses to register. I'm his, in that moment, and I know nothing more than that he owns me, then and there. With his mouth and his dark, wide eyes that look up at me with each rise and fall of his lips.

My hands slip to the sheets, plain black cotton, so characteristic of him. Or of as much of him as I know. They fist into the fabric, and I'm whining my pleas for him to continue and not to stop, Jesus, fuck, not to stop what ever he does. The temperature in the room seems to have elevated since I got here, and I'm feeling it in the flush that's creeping up my cheeks as I beg. I've grown good at it. The begging. I no longer recognize the concept of pride. I stopped long long ago. But when has it ever had anything to do with pride? It's about need. Irrevocable need that doesn't ask what I'd like, or how I'd like it. This need dictates what I say and do, and this need is the need for him. So I'm sorry if I'm not thinking about pride at this particular moment. I'm too busy needing so badly that virtually nothing else matters.

He is slowing down, and I'm coming closer and closer to the end, and I now notice the ache in my muscles because it isn't an ache anymore, it's pain, and it heightens the pleasure in contrast. Touya pauses to languorously lick and kiss at my inner thighs, and I'm convinced that I will soon tear his sheets as my pleas grow desperate, frantic in their nature. Lifting his head to my shaft he wraps his lips around his teeth and gently applies pressure as he takes it into his mouth. Meanwhile his hands lift my knees and pull them closer together around him. This reminds me uncannily of just two nights ago when I was doing the same thing to Sakura, and holding her hips in my hands. Just as I think it, he does the exact same. How bitter the irony. Or would be if I was even thinking about it, and not, in a very familiar way, fucking his face with my hips.

It's not long from there. I'm coming, and trembling, and it almost hurts because of all the sensation. It comes in waves. And it's gone. Slowly, the tightness releases, and I'm left with the accumulated two days of fatigue. My fingers, which were a moment ago almost tearing his hair out, are now combing through it, but awkwardly, shaking. He looks up at me, swallows, licks his lips and lays his head down on my stomach, breathing heavily. For a while we just breathe.

"Why… Why did you push me away two days ago?" I begin weakly, pausing to lick parched lips. Wrong question.

"We don't have to do the post-coital talking bit. It's really not necessary." he replies dryly, and begins to lift himself up off the bed. It's as if energy only comes when he wills it, but suddenly I grab onto him, and pull him back against me. Initially he fights it, but only half-heartedly. He lays back down, but this time turned away from me.

"There hasn't exactly been a "talking bit" at all." I say, suddenly angry, indignant. Hurt. For a while, he says nothing.

"Don't you think there's a reason for that?" he says, finally, quietly. "Talking would be irrelevant." he lies too far from me. I move closer on impulse. Right up against his back, and he doesn't react.

"We're talking right now." words into the back of his neck. My hand already swinging over his hip and landing on the bottom of his stomach. He clenches.

"And what exactly have we concluded from all this conversation?" the warmth is draining from him. Short and clipped. But the hoarseness betrays the fact that there is one place from which the warmth hasn't escaped. On the contrary, the more my hand trails the elastic of his underwear the higher the temperature climbs.

"That you're afraid to." I whisper and kiss skin. And feel a shudder he tried to supress. My fingers slip into the band of his briefs, but just barely. Scraping. Breath hitches in his throat.

"Stop." he says. But it's neither as loud or as smooth as he'd hoped it to be. I moan against his shoulder with the knowledge that he can't control himself. That he is reacting to no one but me and my hands.

"No-please. Let me." the request - thoroughly redundant, because my hand slips down and he inhales. Touya is warm again.

The experience is something akin to religious. And though it is entirely blasphemous to even put the two in the same sentence, I still feel they are congruent. With his cock all the way down my throat.

It's raining heavily. Still.

He reminds me of Jesus.

I hardly gag even though I know I should be, with the speed at which this is happening. I want every inch of this.

I had always been a generous giver, but it wasn't necessarily because I loved to give - it just seemed natural. Gratitude is a totally different story. It's a totally different generosity. Fierce and selfless. Like right now. A need to return the feeling he gave me, to please him until he can't remember his own name.

He is tense and so close and I don't want him to finish. I want this to last forever. For the look on his face not to morph into a blank expression again.

But I never had the heart to stop him from doing something he wanted. He comes. I lap it up and crawl up beside him. So close. There is no one else. Nothing that matters. I have never wished more fervently for someone to return affection more than I do now. His eyes are directed at the ceiling, but gaze is blank. It feels as if it only reaches a couple feet short. Then gets lost somewhere. He distractedly lights a cigarette. I have the acute impression that I'm being intrusive.

"You should probably go." he says casually. The words hang in the air. Somewhere between his gaze and the ceiling.

"You're kicking me out?" I manage, stunned. Slapped-in-the-face.

"Is there any other pressing order of business to be taken care of?" mocking.

"Or-order of business?" he's retreated into himself again and I push away. I'm sitting up.

"If you will." he smirks, but barely. I don't buy it. Takes a drag and lets it out.

"Is that what I was? An order of business?" I squeeze out. My chest suddenly feels tight, like there isn't enough room for my lungs that are all of a sudden expanding to super-human size.

"No, you're right. This was a loving long-term relationship." my eyes narrow.

"How many of such 'orders of business' do you have, pray tell? I couldn't imagine I'm the only one." my voice shakes. He remains imperturbable.

"No, you're not." he smiles. "There's a different one for every day of the week. And then other ones I'll only have intermittently." watches my face for a reaction, and I can't hide it. "Were you actually under the impression that this was special? That this was out of the ordinary?" There is at this point a lump in my throat that I can't swallow. I sit up so that he can't see my face.

"I'm not sure." almost a whisper. Because up until now I hadn't been faced with that question. My motivation since the bathroom incident had only been him. I never stopped to consider that maybe I meant nothing. "I'm not sure what I thought. I guess, between every time I came back and you let me, I didn't think you cared this little." something inside me dwindles down to the very last. Tears are welling up in my eyes and I can't stop them. Nothing is up to me anymore.

"Jesus Christ, d'you need to cry on my shoulder too? I'd have fucked a girl if I needed the drama afterwards." that thing inside me breaks. I get up.

"'the fuck is wrong with you?" I'm facing him, because trying to maintain a semblance of pride is no longer an option. "I _cheated_ on her. She still doesn't fucking know!" I feel like I'm screaming but I've only raised my voice slightly. "I'm a nervous wreck. When I should be guilty about cheating on my girlfriend I think about you. I can't think about anything else. I came here today because I wanted to tell her. I wanted to apologize. I wanted her to break up with me or hit me or scream or SOMETHING! Just not remain oblivious to the fact that I'm not half the man she thinks I am." One tear falls. I ignore it. "And instead I did this. And the worst part about this is that I can't seem to be able to regret it. I can't regret you. When you touch me nothing else exists. Then I go home and realize what I did. And freak out. And eventually I just want you again. More. It's almost as if the fact that I'm guilty about doing this to her magnifies how much I want you. And I want you… So much." I end whispering. He just stares at me blankly.

"And what is it that you want me to do?" the sarcasm is there but it's only skin deep.

"I don't know - CARE. I feel like I'm going insane, I haven't slept in two days and I've failed the only person who ever meant anything to me and loved every second of failing her. Because it was with you. And you're just fine and fucking dandy." Second tear.

"Don't put your problems on me." he squeezes out. I've struck home. It's not sarcasm anymore, it's anger.

"MY problems?" my voice rises. "MY PROBLEMS? She is your SISTER! Why the fuck aren't YOU worried? Or are you really that callous and disgusting that all you ever want is to get your dick sucked, and whether it's with someone you met on the street or with your sister's boyfriend it doesn't matter?" I've adapted the mocking tone now. But I'm yelling. It loses the mocking feeling, I'm just acting psychotic.

"What the fuck do you know about what I feel, you little shit?" he isn't yelling. But it's infinitely more menacing than it would be if he did. He is sitting up.

"According to you, it's nothing. But that was a lie, wasn't it?" I smile, coldly, through tears and an unhealthy flush. "You do feel something. Otherwise you wouldn't be getting to fucking uppity. You'd be pushing your sarcastic crap. Or telling me to get out. Or God, I don't know, maybe you'd just kiss me to shut me up and then get on your knees. You're good at that." the anger is pure and simple, and spilling out through my mouth in huge bursts.

"Don't pretend to be able to foresee my reaction. Don't pretend you know me just because I've given you more orgasms than all the people you've ever fucked put together. You can't know someone based on sex." somewhere along the line he lit another cigarette and I didn't notice. "No matter how much you'd like to."

"Really? Can't I? If you weren't so concerned with sex you'd realize that sometimes it's about what people DON'T say. It's about the things they DON'T do. For example, digressing to the original topic of Sakura, and why you should be more destroyed about what we're doing to her than I am, that was something you DIDN'T do." for one wild moment I realize how horrifyingly similar to him I sound. "So why is it that you're so afraid of talking about it?"

"Shut up." he says quietly. I'm almost afraid. Ash falls on the carpet. He stands up turns around to kill the cigarette. I walk over, and by the time he faces me I'm inches away. I look up at him, because of the height difference, but I feel no fear. Just anger. Resentment. Somewhere in the back of my mind, still, desire.

"Maybe because you can't fucking own up to it." I whisper with a derisive smile. I feel as if I'm high on incredible drugs. I need to hurt him and I can't seem to stop. Then pain explodes on the bottom part of my face because he isn't taking this lightly. I stagger back, almost fall. Give only a small grunt, my head down. Tears spring to my eyes again and I taste blood. He is looking at me, and he is a different person in that moment, opening and closing his hand from the force of the punch.

"So maybe I was right." I look up and smile through the tears, the blood. Genuinely. The only real thing I've accomplished in weeks.

While he is accomplishing punches all over my face. Systematic. Relentless. It happens with him a lot. Kind of as if he's a robot. I moan hollow sounds in the back of my throat and recoil against the wall, but don't fight back. I just slip down, down down, because my legs aren't holding me up. The colossal desire and the colossal pain and the colossal disappointment. They all well up inside me and they're unbearably heavy and I'm the rag doll bleeding all over his carpet. I'm on the ground and a different kind of pain explodes near my stomach, knocking the wind out of me. Excruciating. A kick in the stomach is much lower than I thought he'd stoop, but I guess we are getting to know each other. This is the first full conversation we've ever had this is how it's ending. He stops because the weight behind the kick caused me enough pain to actually force me to roll over and hack furiously, on my knees, doubled over. I can't see straight. The oxygen is coming back but I feel increasingly drowsy. It hurts everywhere. Time passes.

His pretty hands pick me up and I don't fight them. They carry me to the bathroom, but I don't actually notice. I'm somewhere far away, as he dips a cotton ball in alcohol and wipes away blood. My lip is split, and when the alcohol permeates the cut it stings like all hell. But I still don't move. Stare straight ahead. Think nothing. Post-cathartic. The both of us.

He inspects my face, my stomach, finds nothing wrong and leaves the bathroom. I'm in the exact same position when he returns a minute later, holding a phone to his head.

"Hi, can I get a cab…" address, thank you, goodbye. Once again, pretty hands pick me up and carry me away. To the room. And dress me slowly. Not gently - he doesn't do gentle. I move only when absolutely necessary. He fishes a few bills from his wallet and deposits them in my pocket, at which point he goes to pick me up again and I jerk away. Though jerk seems quite a harsh term for what I do. I'm too weak to jerk. I just kind of push at his hands petulantly. All I can manage is petulant. He attempts it again, but despite all the pain it's causing me I worm away from him and get up. Unsteady though I am, I finally get to the staircase.

"You really shouldn't-"

"Fuck you." I throw over my shoulder. Broken and raspy and unthreatening. I can't cry. I want to.

I smoke, but it's mechanical. It does nothing to relieve. My hands shake. I shove the one that isn't holding the cigarette into my pocket. I smoke for the sake of something to do. I contemplate entering. I'm a monster.

The full weight of my end-of-summer fun is descending upon my shoulders. I don't try to analyze what I've done because that would mean realizing just to what degree I am monstrous. For now, I'm content just accepting the general idea. I am, in fact, a monster.

The sky is a dark, dirty grey. It's later. It's drizzling. I can no longer smoke because my hand just doesn't appear willing to hold the cigarette up to my mouth anymore. It falls from my shaking fingers. I turn, stop and consider the doors for a moment. Walk in. It echoes. Everything fucking echoes here.

Inside there are candles. Everywhere. Stain glass. The same as I remember from years ago. Intimidating. Ominous. I stopped coming for a reason.

The booth is more claustrophobic though, than it used to be. I collapse into the seat and stare down at my hands. I have a consolation. A tiny tiny one that might get me through the next little while without suffering the full effect of what I did to myself. To him. To her. But mostly to him. Poor fucking kid. I'll be off. Up up and away to university. A place that I right now imagine to solve all my problems. To get rid of all the blame and all the mistakes and to start over. Or to let me get the hell away because I'm good at that. It characterizes me better than anything. The knee-jerk disappearing act every time I fuck up and come even close to admitting it to myself. I leave other people to pick through my messes. It's how I function.

The wooden panel slides open, making a painfully familiar noise. I inhale silently, and as much air as I can. Let the air escape.

"Forgive me father, for I have sinned."

A/N: It took me longer to write this than it would to bear a child. Review. This really deserves it.


	9. Monsters

**Abandon**

_a·ban·don_

_1. vt: leave somebody behind_

_2. vt: leave a place because of danger_

_3. vt: halt something in progress_

_4. vt: give in to emotion_

_n: lack of restraint: complete lack of inhibition or self-restraint_

A/N: Good God, it's been a number of years. Anyway. I do need to finish this one. The next chapter will probably be the end.

Warnings: Language, implicit graphic situations.

Disclaimer: I own none of this and I make no profit writing my little stories.

**Monsters**

There are things you avoid admitting at all costs. Especially to yourself.

Sometimes it feels like the world stops. Time is suddenly inconsequential. I might have slept for days and I could keep sleeping forever.

Everything hurts. I don't understand the time of day (night or early morning) and I don't want to. I'm staring up into space and there isn't a ceiling at the end of it. There is no end of it. I feel like I've had the air knocked out of me but not as hard as when he actually did it, and slow and constant. Tears are leisurely streaming out of the corners of my eyes, across my temples and into my hair and I don't feel a need to blink.

Purpose appears to have gone altogether. There isn't any reason to get up. There is no sharp realization, when my eyes snap open and I freak out because I remember what happened. I know before I wake up. And I slowly become conscious but the knowledge is there already. It chokes. But worse, I can still breathe, no asphyxia comes, I don't pass out. I just know. And it's harrowing.

There is a strange sense of surprise. I hadn't thought him capable of this. I didn't realize that he actually wouldn't want me at some point. That he would get fed up enough to hurt me. To kick me around and then pay my cab fare back. But I suppose I hadn't thought of many things.

I've never felt this before. I had never been close enough to anyone for them to tear my heart out of my ass. It doesn't let up. There is no concentration factor. It's just all you think about. I've heard songs about this, seen movies, read books. It's just like they describe it - you pretty much want to die. And until you experience it you can't relate. You don't see the gravity. You think it's cheap and melodramatic and it only happens to fools.

But it actually isn't, as I latently find. Start to finish, nothing is up to you. It just happens. Your guts are someone else's to play with as they wish, and sometimes you're lucky and they're careful. Other times luck doesn't favour you. The books, the movies, they never manage to tell you quite how grim it is.

I've adapted this avoidant lifestyle quickly and relentlessly and now it seems too late to stop. I'm in too far. I've let it sit too long. And the knowledge of all these things was seemingly right in front of me all this time. I complain so indignantly that no one made it clear enough, but I knew. I must have. Instead I chose to ignore it. To let myself fall, scream, say yes.

Maybe I just needed to say yes to someone.

He doesn't want me. I meant nothing. The words ring in my head. And at that point my entire being is encompassed within their meaning. I don't know what I imagined him to feel for me, because I never stopped to compartmentalize the entire situation into what was happening, the implications and what future there was for us. There was just so much urgency. And the future seemed so far away. And I was cheating and it was horrid and I hated myself and him and I wanted. Wanted so much.

The want, the need - it all sounds like such a comfortable excuse. The only absent factor is truth. What I'm thinking is the closest I've come to objectivity in weeks. Yet it feels like months passed since he caught my glance at the kitchen table. But they haven't. No time passed at all. There have only been a few encounters. And a myriad of thoughts in between that finished the encounters for me. Thoughts that wrote the story in my head the way I wanted it to sound.

I wonder absently about how everything went to shit before I could stop it, where all my demons came from - if he made them up in me or if they had been hiding away all this time. The outcome of everything is here and everything inside me hurts.

I don't feel myself fall back asleep.

Insistent knocking wakes me. I might have slept for days.

Her agitated voice rings out from behind the door, muffled but audible.

"Open the door, I know you're in there!"

I open the door and we just stare at each other. The guilt is in my face, but it's an afterthought. I'm too tired to feel guilty. In fact, I'm too tried to feel anything but abandoned. Truth be told - I forgot she even existed. I don't bother thinking up a cover story or lifting the neck of my shirt as her compassionate/infuriated eyes travel from my face to my neck. She pushes past me and walks into my living room. I follow her, dazed, walking to the slaughter having accepted the outcome. I collapse onto the couch. She just stands in the middle of the room. Watches me.

"Have you had enough?" she sounds as tired as I feel.

"What are you talking about?" my voice is raspy from disuse, I have to clear my throat.

"You don't want to talk, you don't want to leave your house, you're a mess, you've got hickeys I know for a fact I didn't give you, and you're not even trying to lie about them." she is shaking with rage or pain or something like that. She doesn't yell. She just accounts for all of my recent faults. There is no accusation in her voice, because accusation would have to be proven. Sakura just states fact.

"What do you want me to say? Because I think you already know everything you need to know." I mutter, not looking at her. I just need her to hate me.

"I know you cheated, I didn't need hickeys to tell me that." The words ring and leave silence in their wake. She knew. I want to laugh. My hand goes to my mouth. The hysteria is bubbling up in my throat and the corners of my mouth twitch madly but it subsides before it ever leaves my lips. All this time she just wanted me to get it out of my system.

Suddenly I'm no longer hollow, and there is anger and guilt and it's everywhere. And there is fear, because I don't know how much she knows.

She isn't crying. Her face looks like it's aged ten years with worry. I can hardly believe she's worried. "I want to know why. I need you to explain to me what I did wrong. There must have been something-"

"NO!" I come alive. "It was all my fault! All of it!" I'm yelling as hard as my lungs will let me. "You will not take this upon yourself!" she flinches away from me.

"You wouldn't have cheated if you were perfectly happy with me." I look at her and I can't believe my eyes. She has aged. She has grown up into this person of substance, and kindness and selflessness. And all this time I didn't see her. She wasn't enough for me.

"You don't get it. This isn't about you. You-you are amazing. You are perfect. You were always there for me. I-" and here I pause, because I don't know how to explain to her why it happened. "I don't know what possessed me." his face surfaces in my mind, his eyes, the need, everything.

"If I'd been a better girlfriend, if I'd loved you more- maybe, maybe then-" she is looking at me desperately, and she comes close to me and touches my face and I can't look her in the eye. Her fingers stray to my lips, she isn't crying - and I'm surprised that there are so many things about her that I didn't know. "Jesus, what happened to you?" Sakura whispers shakily, her hands quickly move through my hair along my neck and there is no anger when she touches the hickeys, she goes to my chest my stomach. There it hurts.

"Who did this to you?" lifting my shirt, she looks at the single dark bruise that the kick left me with. She considers the split lip, the light bruising along my jaw. The laughter comes now. I let out a grim, disbelieving snort and step back from her.

"It doesn't matter."

"Yes it does! Tell me what happened."

"So that you can go fight them for me?" I am beginning to sound derisive but this is too bizarre for me not to. "You see? This is what I'm talking about. I cheated on you. I cheated more than once. I wasn't drunk. I wasn't forced. I just couldn't stop myself. Fuck if I'll ever know why, with the kind of girlfriend that I had. But you… you see bruises and you forget that I ever did anything. You first blame yourself, and then worry about me." I'm looking at her now, and nothing is more painful than her face.

"Sakura you let me ride it out." I whisper. I want to blame her. To make this as ironic as possible, I want to accuse her of letting me cheat. "You knew. And you didn't freak out, you didn't yell at me, you sure as hell didn't dump me. You gave me time and space to just let it pass. I'm right aren't I?" I collapse on the couch, forgetting bruises, flinching. She only nods.

"What's more, is that you let me use you to get over myself. To get over my shit. You made cheating as comfortable an experience for me as you could. So my fucking question to you is, why?" my voice shakes. I am furious, guilty, abandoned, and I never wanted to laugh more in my entire life. The tears come slowly and she watches. Nothing but compassion. Nothing but understanding.

"WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?" I'm shouting because she isn't. I'm bordering on hysterical because she isn't. Perhaps also because everyone breaks eventually. "I did everything possible to make you hate me. I fucked up enough for you never to speak to me again. I made so many mistakes, Sakura. If ever I tried to fix this it would turn on me. I lied so much." my head drops - I've exhausted myself.

"Is it over?" she finally says.

"What?"

"Between you and that girl. Is it over?" there is no anger. Still, after everything. The laughter is threatening to burst out of me again, seriously this time, I hardly have time to wrap my mind around the importance of not laughing out loud at this moment.

"Does it really-"

"Yes it matters." she cuts me off, the closest she's come to being sharp with me this entire conversation. "Is it over?"

"Yeah. Yeah it's over." The first time I've said it out loud. His face reappears in my head again. The knowledge hurts. I wonder when it stops hurting.

"Okay." she says and nods, staring off into boring mid-day outside my window. After a long time she continues. "You wanted to know why I'm still here. Well, here it is." her eyes travel from the window to me. "I love you Syaoran. I love you, and you don't even realize how glad I am that you only cheated, that you didn't leave me." her voice is more or less impassive as she says all of this, but miraculously, she is smiling.

"I am still here because you owe me an explanation. Because the way you've been treating me requires for you to explain yourself, but I think you've suffered enough. You're guilty enough. That's why I'm not yelling, I'm not upset with you. I'm just… Glad. Glad that you've come back to me. We can talk it through later. When you're ready." I listen to her, and I try to absorb.

"I don't deserve you." I mutter, as she goes to sit down beside me, and takes my hand into her tiny fingers. "You have no idea how much I regret ever hurting you." I can't look at her again.

"Of course you deserve me. You're a decent person. I know how horrible you feel. I know how much you regret it. That's why I'm still here. That's why I love you. You aren't heartless." she leans in, and kisses me on the temple. "I'm not giving up on you."

Oh no, I think. No I don't deserve you. But I certainly deserve all the memories I'm left with. And everything about my little dalliance into the world of your older brother that you will never, ever find out about. That's when the sobs come. My face collapses into my hands and I'm shaking with the sheer force of the thing that is tearing out of my chest.

I think of everything I've done to her. To me. To him. There is a certain bitter sweetness when I think of her. I think of forgiveness. Penance. Hope. I think of things that I will have to overcome, but it is a source of something that is inherently good. I avoid thinking of him altogether. I am afraid. Because I know, I feel that my desire for him comes from a dark place. He let my monsters out. And abandoned me. I've never missed anyone more.

I don't notice when she pulls me into her lap, and my I bury my face in her knees. Sakura is draped over me, and she protects me that way, with her tiny hands. They comb through my hair, and she tells me it will be okay, and that she understands. She tells me that she won't let anything happen to me. She senses my fear. Fuck me if I know how.

In between sobs I chant apologies. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry. We aren't listening to each other. The meaning doesn't verbally come across. But somehow calm spreads. Her calm. It soothes my mantra and my ragged breath. We remain like that for a long time.

We eat dinner together. We do this most days. No one speaks. I can hear myself chew. I remember the way it all started, I was sitting in this very chair, and he was sitting opposite of me. Today his chair is empty. He is not watching my every move.

I've been trying to write him off as a failed experiment. It's not a bad idea, considering that I'm experiencing the special variety of numbness that only prayer can bring.

A few more days and all of this is over. I don't have to put any more effort into anything.

Sakura lacks her usual zeal and takes smaller bites. She looks tired. I presume that he told her. I absently worry if she knows it's me, but dismiss it. She isn't hard to read - if she really knew I would see it in her face. She isn't even looking at me.

I know I'm responsible for what transpired, but I can hardly feel it. I apologized, and it seems as though someone forgave me. And I've been drowning myself in liquor ever since.

Yuki wondered if I was alright - I didn't want to fuck, just drink and drink and drink and go out and be in loud places with bodies all around so that I couldn't hear anything and I didn't have enough space to be isolated.

I want to be far away. I'm numb but I'm distinctly uncomfortable. I avoid the thought of hurting him. I don't think about what he said. He is a kid, what does he know.

My chair screeches against the floor boards as it slides back - I stand up from the table. Dad looks up, Sakura doesn't.

"I'm going for a walk." I announce to a mostly empty room.

I'm at the same park, on the same bench. He is everywhere. I smoke without tasting it. I don't wonder about what I've done.

But I've lied before.

A/N: Sorry this took so long - I forgot to finish this chapter as my life was taken up with other things. Haven't written fiction in a while. Hope this is pleasing. Not the end quite yet.


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